Collaboration... from the screenwriter's POV
FADE IN:
INT. COMMERCIALIZED COFFEE SHOP - NIGHT
Two young artists command a table normally reserved for six. One is tall and softening from too much time away from the gym. He is in his late-20s. This is JEREMY. His cohort, sipping on a fresh latte, is the energy of the room. Focused, determined, early-20s, this is COLE.
Two LAPTOPS are opened before them. We join them in mid-conversation.
COLE
That's exactly what I was thinking.
And how about we try...
JEREMY
And then we just move this here,
take this over here... yeah... that's
gonna work.
That's one way to look at it. Jeremy here... musing on the symbiotic relationship that is the writer-director. In any film, there is a person (or people) who pen the script. The screenwriter(s). And then there's a director. The one who has to take the pages and put them onto the screen. And both sides of the coin have their own vision of what it will look like. One creates. The other interprets.
And I imagine there are varying levels of interaction between writer and director as you move through the pantheon of film. There are those that option a script, sell it, and step back as new writers come in to rewrite, reinvent, and depending on your viewpoint, destroy or improve your work. And there are those films where the screenwriter stays very, very involved. And perhaps, a few instances that fall along the in between.
Cole recently posted on this topic and brought up an idea that I'm used to seeing in theatre, and excited to see happening in film. Collaboration. As he mentioned, the script has been tightened and trimmed, and in parts, it's already evolved from its staged predecessor. As I began working with Cole and John on adapting the play, we spent hours on Skype, over email, taking up workspace at any local coffee shop that served anything worth drinking, and began to answer some of the big questions that were never fully tackled in the play. I won't give away state secrets here, but rest assured that moments of frustrating ambiguity you might have experienced if you've seen the play have been addressed to offer a more complete story arc that's more suited to film. And that was born out of many, many talks between the three of us.
Going into this new partnership, I (the writer) took a moment to think about how Cole (the director) might approach this. And then I realized two things. I'm not a mind-reader. And he just blogged about it. So, I stopped and thought about how I've directed others' writing in the past.
When I direct for theatre, I aim to realize the script as I feel the writer intended. And that choice effects how I direct actors to emote, how the pacing flows, and everything down to a costume or prop selection. And then I have to wonder if it's what the author even intended. In 2007, I directed a show called "Darkside". And it was well received. Awards were bestowed from the people in Columbus and Ohio who bestow such awards. And then, I went to see that very show, directed by the very man who wrote it, Ken Jones. We clearly had different visions for that story. Some similarities were there—mostly in the set and costumes and the number of actors on stage (actually, even there we found a way to differ).
And so I think, how great would it have been to have had Ken there to bounce ideas around with and get him to talk about why this character does what he does and all that. Make it a dialogue. The kicker? We're now connections on LinkedIn and he sent me three of his plays as a gift.
Point is, there's a want in any artist to produce the best art. Creating a conversation about a script between writer and director is one way to help ensure that happening. So, that brings us to the now, as the screenwriter (me) and the director (Cole) sit down and begin the task of polishing Separation Anxiety to the best it can be.
That's us. Being collaborators.
I was reading an interview recently featuring screenwriter Christopher Wilkinson, who co-wrote Nixon and Ali, among others. And in talking about his writing relationship with Stephen Rivele (Nixon, Ali) he made a wonderful observation about collaboration which I think is at the heart of how we are approaching the final stretch of rewrites for Separation Anxiety: "And we have absolutely no ego about the writing process; we will go with whoever has the best idea, scene to scene and line by line. If we don't agree, we go with whoever can make the most compelling or passionate case for a character, story turn, whatever."
I value Cole's artistic opinion and he value's mine, so I'm excited about the end result that sits upon the horizon. I'll be honest, Separation Anxiety is intensely personal for me, and so I won't be surprised if there are moments (as Cole mentioned) where I dig in my heels. And those heel-digging nights will be for those compelling cases that Wilkinson talks about. But in the end, I will always pen the words that serve the story in the best possible way. That is my ultimate goal with anything I write. What serves the story and the characters? And this is the one thing that any screenwriter and director need to agree on. Making the best art. Serving the story.
Thanks for reading. Coming up later in the week is a special guest posting from our Sound Designer, Jordan Fehr. Until next time...
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