ET: A Film By . . . Melissa Mathison?

Friday, 13 October 2006

It’s ubiquitous--when we talk about films, nearly everyone buys into Auteur Theory. You know Auteur Theory--the theory developed in the 1950’s by a bunch of French wannabe directors that a film has only one author and that author is the director. By D. W. O'Dell It’s ubiquitous--when we talk about films, nearly everyone buys into Auteur Theory. You know Auteur Theory--the theory developed in the 1950’s by a bunch of French wannabe directors that a film has only one author and that author is the director. One assumes that if these types (led by Francois Truffaut) had aspired to be stuntmen, they would have declared stuntmen to be the creative force behind all movie making. The best description of Auteur Theory that I’ve heard is that is assumes that the worst film made by an independent director like Otto Preminger (let’s say River of No Return) is better than the best film made by a studio hack like, oh, Michael Curtiz (who directed The Adventures of Robin Hood and Casablanca). Put that way, Auteur Theory would appear to possibly have a few holes in it. Is there another way to think about film? A new book by David Kipen humbly offers the alternative theory that the author of a film should be considered to be the author of the screenplay. This should be considered one of the greatest “Duh” theories of all time, but given the influence of Auteur Theory in Hollywood, it may be decades before people start thinking of films as being “by” the director. Kipen calls his alternative “Schreiber Theory” from the Yiddish word for writer. French is not the only hoity-toity sounding language out there. In his book entitled The Schreiber Theory he explains his concept of looking at films by looking at the screenwriter. Hitchcock’s North by Northwest becomes Ernst Lehman’s North by Northwest. Weird, no? Is there a way to compare the two theories? With a database available such as Internet Movie Database, just maybe there is. One could, if one were so inclined, take the names of several well known directors and look at the ratings of all their films. One could do the same for a number of writers. If Auteur Theory were correct, then the ratings of the films by a single director should have a low standard deviation; that is, a director should produce films of approximately equal quality regardless of script quality. Contrarily, if Kipen’s theory is correct, then writers should have a lower standard deviation associated with their movies. I am far too lazy to do the math, but I would be willing to bet a $5 bill that Kipen would be proven right if anyone was ever industrious enough to crunch the numbers. Great directors often produce bombs from bad scripts, but a good writer rarely has a script ruined by a poor director. Kipen points out some problems with Schreiber theory. Writers Guild dictates sometimes obscure the contributions of writers, mandating credit going to someone who actually contributed little to the final script. Kipen advocates that the Writers Guild begin research into the writing process for past films, while creating a database for future films that would track script changes so the responsible parties can be identified. Kipen also produces an invaluable list of screen authors whose oeuvre should be studied. Some of the names are familiar, like James Agee and William Goldman. Some are not familiar names, but their work is certainly familiar. This group includes William Broyles, Jr. (Apollo 13, Cast Away, Unfaithful, Jarhead), Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, Spy Who Came In From the Cold, Murder on the Orient Express), and Calder Willingham (The Graduate, Little Big Man, Rambling Rose). I hope Schreiber Theory catches on. Writers have been the butt of jokes in Hollywood for years (did you hear about the blonde starlet who wanted to get ahead in Hollywood so she slept with a writer?). In Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo an actor says he created a character; when it is pointed out that the writer actually created the character, he replies that yeah, but he fleshed him out. It is more than past time that directors had the “A Film By” credit taken away and credit be given to the person who actually created the thing. Few directors aspire to be a writer, but almost every writer wants to direct. Nearly anybody can watch some DVDs, point a camera, and work with a cinematographer and call themselves a director. But not everyone can look at a blank computer screen and see the words that will fill it with interesting characters and intriguing situations. But if it is so easy to direct and so hard to write, why does directing pay better? It seems to contradict the law of supply and demand. Sounds like the plot of a mystery thriller. But I won’t start on the screenplay unless I can direct.

 

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