F Scott Fitzgerald - a failure at scripts

[Zensteve]

Here's a link to an article in the New York Times.

Link here

It's not a very indepth article overall (mainly about some recently found manuscripts)... but it mentions his career as screenwriter in Hollywood. I found it interesting that one of America's most well-known "classic" authors was not able to effectively bring his writing talents to the screenplay format.

Here's a quote from it...

The new archive reveals, among other things, that Fitzgerald approached every screenplay as if it were a novel and often wrote long back stories for each of the characters before setting down a word of dialogue.

Anyways... just interesting. :shock:

 

[ericbelgau]

I think Hemmingway had the same problem.

I just got out of a meeting that began "This is the best material I've ever had to work with. It's absolutely amazing. The passion and the humor and..." etc. And it ended with script notes on the first third of the film that effectively made all the characters sound the same and eliminated the subtext altogether.

Maybe that's why.

A fifth and a house on the beach in Cuba sounds really inviting when you endure that kind of meeting.

A novel is also a much more deliberate medium to work in, and I find that what helps me to write a novel hurts me as a screenwriter. A novel is all about depth of vision and absolute, intransigent devotion to a full-bodied expression. A screenplay is the blueprint for a huge amount of creative collaboration. To write a novel, you have to be very stubborn and inflexible, or your story comes out sounding wishy-washy. To write a screenplay, you have to be very flexible because everyone has to have their input.

 

[clive]

Interesting stuff. I've always been a huge fan of Hemmingway and went to visit his house when I was in Cuba a few years back.

I agree, the skills required to write for film and for print are completely different. Altough, there has been a tendancy over the last ten years for new British novelist to write in a more filmic manner, usually with because they are hoping that their novel will get optioned.

I think the other point is that a novel is written to do just one thing. ericbelgau is right, a screenplay has to be a multi-functional tool, it has to be sell the story to the backer, provide sufficient information to provide the director with a visualisation of each scene, it has to provide inspiration to the actors, helping them to understand their characters. It is the road map for the whole production and everyone from the costume designer to the art director will use it as their guide.

In a novel you can get away with dialogue that would never pass the grade in a film. It's amazing how bad some novels sound when they are read out loud, even though they are great reads. I think, that writing good dialogue is one of the most skilled things a writer ever attempts.