The Cine Technician (1953-1956)

34 THE C I X E T E C H X I C I A X March-April, 1952 Gloria Sicanson and Erich Von Stroheim in " Sunset Boulevard THE project has been set. It has been determined that a certain novel or play or screen original or idea is strong enough to bear the weight of twelve reels of celluloid. Then comes putting it down en paper. In speaking of every step down the long line of picture-making, I'm sure my confreres are saying " Here's the place not to economise — here's the spot to shoot the works." About putting it down on paper, I make that statement with the deepest conviction. There is a story about the early days of picture-making — a nightmare story for writers. A producer had just hired a writer. He gave him a brand new pencil, looked at him with pleading eyes and said, indicating an inch-long stub of pencil, " Tonight down to here?" The process of writing cannot be driven too hard. It's up to a producer to find that his writers, besides knowing their job, are honest and conscientious. His picture depends on what they set down on paper — " The jokes," as the pages are called, rather grimly, in the studios. Writing is concentration — and if intelligent minds don't concentrate on the picture at this stage, you're going to have nothing. We producers have been urged to get down to actual cases in this series, to tie up our remarks with pictures you readers have seen and with actual experiences. Therefore, shucking aside all reticence, I'll confine myself to the experience of the writer I know best — me. As a screen writer, I've never worked alone, and I'm going to discuss the methods of writing scripts Billy Wilder and I used for many years, and which Walter Reisch and Richard Breen and I now use. Putting the Picture on Paper A view of screen writing by CHARLES BRACKETT, a member of the Board of the American Screen Producers' Guild, and writer-producer on such films as 'Sunset Boulevard' & 'Lost Week-End' That method begins with talk — seemingly endless talk — but all of it directed towards the project. Any story can go in a lot of directions. You have to explore the ones which appeal to you, before you find the one you are going to use. Usually you find yourself with complete outlines for several pictures before you make your final choice. There's one scene you love in one version — another in another version. Can they be reconciled? If not, one of them has to go. It has to be jettisoned completely, not to blur the new line. I call this talking part of the job filling up the reservoir, and the reservoir should be full to the top before writing begins. During the talk, the characters have been getting clearer. The only reliable peg I know on which to hang a story is a character. If you can get a central character with real blood in his veins, and strong desires and a pair of feet that really walk the earth, you've got a picture. If you can get such a character in sharp conflict with other people as truly perceived as he is. you may have a great picture. We never work much preparing long treatments, believing that a comprehensive treatment saps some of the vitality from an idea. That is. if you do it yourself. Once, however. Wilder and I were given a 40-page sketch called " Memo To A Movie Producer." It had no plot whatever, but presented a background brilliantly — a little town the other side of the Mexican border; where refugees from Europe waited to get into the United States. It grew into Hold Back Tin Dawn. Mostly, we've developed our own ideas. For instance, one scene I'd heard about developed into To Each His Own. It showed a middle-aged woman walking down a station platform where