Originally on PFC

You are a part of it.

As are film journalists, directors, actors, critics, reviewers, right down to the spot boy. The most egregious offender is of course the self-effacing screenwriter, who puts up with the debasement and will often partake in it. So, you have people running around spouting sewage like, “A film is merely a ploy to wokka wokka wokka,” or “A story gives you an excuse to enter certain spaces,” “Scripting and plotting is a yawn mechanical exercise” and similar wankery.

Be wise and end it now, because I have declared war and I wear barbed knuckle dusters.

I will level the instigator blame squarely on the French. Truffaut, his band of merry wankers and the auteur theory. The whole notion that directors were the primary authors (auteur in French) of film, and had a distinct vision or theme running through their films. The role of Screenwriters was minimized, as was the fact that film is collaborative. Their disdain for story chafes and their approach of imbuing meaning through interpretation based on knowledge of the director’s life and/or experiences is at best suspect.

It may also explain why I can’t sit through a single film from the French New Wave without nodding off. No one has a story to tell. They just want to share what they feel and how they see the world. If you try telling a story, the choices you make will be a greater expression of your worldview than any amount of turning the camera on your navel.

I have a theory that if you have a theory and you repeat it often and with conviction, it will be accepted as fact, and at times border dangerously close to truth. The sheep of the world will receive someone else’s words without a trenchant dissection of the idea conveyed.

When it comes to the social sciences, theories and hypotheses can neither be proved nor disproved. They may only be discredited, or championed, and research in the humanities suffers without the rigour of scientific approach. This is usually compensated by a desire to discern the truth. Not in recent times. While academic circles are finally smarting up to the handjobbery that is Deconstruction, that other loathsome group, purveyors of second hand information, of which there is an increasing army in the age of the blog, continue to peddle misinformation and play obscurity for depth.

The malaise runs deep. Not through concerted effort, but by casual ignorance.

The problem with writing in general, and screenwriting in particular, is the familiarity of words. Most people can string a bunch of words together, and shockingly, sometimes it forms a sentence, and doubly shocking, sometimes it makes sense. Try it.

I want water.
Me hungry.
Aati Kya Khandala?

A Writer communicates the intangible, much the way an artist does. The artist feels an emotion that translates onto a canvas, that you receive and process through your worldview and set of experiences. They may not match, but such is the joy in the human accident of communication.

A Writer of fiction, literary or otherwise, has a grab-bag of tools. Words that describe thoughts, emotion, dialogue and action. A Screenwriter has only the last two. You don’t think you can write a novel, or one that is good anyhow. You don’t think you can paint a mural, or play the piano. What makes you think you can write films? Are you willing to give it study?

Much as I dislike the term technicians bandied about in the Indian film industry, I would not mind as much if they added Screenwriters to that group. Ours is a technical craft too. When done well, like all other disciplines, it looks effortless and leads the pygmies to think they too can write a scene loaded with drama, pathos or comedy, AND make it visual. Everyone accepts that you need a good script or Writer for a film, but use every opportunity to belittle the Writer. Let me count the ways in which screenwriting is denigrated.

The journalist covering the film writes. In journalism school, news is referred to as story. The journalist thinks s/he can write stories and write for film. They envy you, the Screenwriter, since your name appears on the film, and you get paid for it (however meager that money is), while they don’t. For them, it’s probably like watching you fuck their wife or girl/boyfriend. They hate you, and will do everything in their power to take you down.

An example would be how they always ask the director or actor, how many scenes/dialogues were improvised. They refuse to believe someone put that shit down on a page. Someone sat in a room or coffeeshop, and created a world out of nothing. Just their thoughts. Everyone else is just interpreting the Screenwriter’s words. Jealous bastards.

Critics. The ones that write glowing or withering reviews of films. Again, read above. You’re fucking their wife too. They want to make films, and will grudgingly admire directors, editors and whoever else. Screenwriter William Goldman said that no one messes with the DP, because no one knows what a fucking f-stop is. All these fields that make up a film are considered technical, and they probably don’t have the aptitude for it. Yet, because they use words, they think they can write dialogue, and create drama through action. They can not, not unless they respect the craft, and are willing students.

Directors - They are jealous that they have to be on a set and sweat it out and bring to life your thoughts. That great dolly shot they have in mind…useless if it does not serve your story. You are better read than them, and they may feel intellectually inferior to you. They hate you and are insecure that you are judging their interpretation of your scene. That’s why they don’t let the Writer on the set.

Actors - The first ones to take credit for a Screenwriter’s dialogues in the name of improvisation. They’re dying to play that cool character that YOU wrote. Without your character background, information, and actions that they can play, they have nothing. Your words dictate their performance. Witness Ellen Burstyn in Requiem For a Dream and The Fountain. She is a very good actress, and they both have the same director. But in The Fountain, Aronofsky does not have Selby Jr. backing him up on the script, and everyone made a hash of it.

Dialogue Writers - A uniquely Indian situation. Have some fucking pride. You are also the Screenwriter of the film. You can change the direction of the whole film with one line of dialogue. Don’t let them divide and conquer. Insist on being credited as a Screenwriter in partnership with the originator of the story/screenplay.

Screenwriters - Last, and certainly the least. I spit on you. Have some dignity, and stop settling for the scraps. Head up, chest out. Say it loud, and say it proud.

I am a Screenwriter and without me you are nothing.