My favorite quote from this article:
First person singular: Why is the screenwriter the Cinderella of film?
To read the full article in its entirety:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/07/21/nosplit/bffps121.xml
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/07/2007
Screenwriters are solitary creatures who rarely get recognised for their achievements. Ellin Stein ponders why
If the film industry were an American high school, the actors would be the athletes and cheerleaders whom everyone wants to date, the director would be the cool kid everyone wants to be friends with, and the writer would be the bright but unprepossessing geek whose work everyone wants to copy but who never gets invited to parties.
Screenwriters are only too aware of this - just look at how, in films ranging from Sunset Boulevard (1950) through Barton Fink (1991), The Player (1992) and Adaptation (2002), they portray themselves as put-upon loners. Indeed, at a gathering (surely the collective noun is "an aggrievement") of screenwriters earlier this month, Oscar-winner and co-writer of Brokeback Mountain (2005) Diana Ossana said that "writers are considered bottom-feeders", while William Nicholson, whose script credits include Shadowlands (1993) and Gladiator (2000), began his keynote address by asking: "Why are we screenwriters so powerless? Why do we have such a lousy time?"
None the less, around 500 of these unfortunates paid upwards of £240 to attend the second annual Screenwriting Festival on the grounds of a Victorian estate outside Cheltenham, the only large-scale event devoted to feature-film screenwriting in the UK.
They polished their craft at workshops such as "Writing the Perfect Scene", got insights into the business at "Dealing With Hollywood", listened to established writers including Ossana and David Hare discuss the screenwriter's life at higher altitudes ("It's extremely painful and it never gets any better" was Nicholson's verdict), and networked, networked, networked.
Giving writers an excuse to get out of the house was one of the prime rationales behind the event's creation, said the festival's founder David Pearson: "It's a peculiar thing. Producers, directors, cameramen - everybody else meets up at something, but there's nowhere for screenwriters to meet. So they know hardly any other screenwriters and it's a pretty lonely job."
Released from solitary confinement, attendees ranged from bestselling authors with studio contracts to unproduced novices, all of whom mingled with remarkable camaraderie. For example, having paid his dues writing animated shorts and mobile phone content, Simon Biggs wrote a script that won him a place at the Berlin Film Festival's Talent Campus, where it was made into a short film. This led to him developing a feature for a German-American co-production.
First person singular: Why is the screenwriter the Cinderella of film?
To read the full article in its entirety:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/07/21/nosplit/bffps121.xml
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 21/07/2007
Screenwriters are solitary creatures who rarely get recognised for their achievements. Ellin Stein ponders why
If the film industry were an American high school, the actors would be the athletes and cheerleaders whom everyone wants to date, the director would be the cool kid everyone wants to be friends with, and the writer would be the bright but unprepossessing geek whose work everyone wants to copy but who never gets invited to parties.
Screenwriters are only too aware of this - just look at how, in films ranging from Sunset Boulevard (1950) through Barton Fink (1991), The Player (1992) and Adaptation (2002), they portray themselves as put-upon loners. Indeed, at a gathering (surely the collective noun is "an aggrievement") of screenwriters earlier this month, Oscar-winner and co-writer of Brokeback Mountain (2005) Diana Ossana said that "writers are considered bottom-feeders", while William Nicholson, whose script credits include Shadowlands (1993) and Gladiator (2000), began his keynote address by asking: "Why are we screenwriters so powerless? Why do we have such a lousy time?"
None the less, around 500 of these unfortunates paid upwards of £240 to attend the second annual Screenwriting Festival on the grounds of a Victorian estate outside Cheltenham, the only large-scale event devoted to feature-film screenwriting in the UK.
They polished their craft at workshops such as "Writing the Perfect Scene", got insights into the business at "Dealing With Hollywood", listened to established writers including Ossana and David Hare discuss the screenwriter's life at higher altitudes ("It's extremely painful and it never gets any better" was Nicholson's verdict), and networked, networked, networked.
Giving writers an excuse to get out of the house was one of the prime rationales behind the event's creation, said the festival's founder David Pearson: "It's a peculiar thing. Producers, directors, cameramen - everybody else meets up at something, but there's nowhere for screenwriters to meet. So they know hardly any other screenwriters and it's a pretty lonely job."
Released from solitary confinement, attendees ranged from bestselling authors with studio contracts to unproduced novices, all of whom mingled with remarkable camaraderie. For example, having paid his dues writing animated shorts and mobile phone content, Simon Biggs wrote a script that won him a place at the Berlin Film Festival's Talent Campus, where it was made into a short film. This led to him developing a feature for a German-American co-production.
