Casting the Movie
Posted by Andie Ryan Blog at 12/3/2009 1:54 PM 
Categories: Learning from the Movies,Writing Life
Tags: youth in movies Hays Code Hollywood Hemingway Lillian Hellman story structure dialogue Scott Spencer screenplay revision The Children's Hour moviegoing audiences Kyle MacLachlan Film Forum writing for Hollywood Somerset Maugham These Three Scott Fitzgerald Faulkner books to film casting baby boomers Michael Clayton
Categories: Learning from the Movies,Writing Life
Tags: youth in movies Hays Code Hollywood Hemingway Lillian Hellman story structure dialogue Scott Spencer screenplay revision The Children's Hour moviegoing audiences Kyle MacLachlan Film Forum writing for Hollywood Somerset Maugham These Three Scott Fitzgerald Faulkner books to film casting baby boomers Michael Clayton
I don't know if other writers do this, but I picture actors in the roles of my characters as I'm writing. But I was in for a shocker, discussing roles recently with a screenwriter buddy. He said that everyone in the book would have to be younger "on screen," to make the story more appealing to moviegoing audiences. Who are, of course, younger.
What, we fifty-somethings don't get off our couches to go to the movies anymore? But we're baby boomers. Nothing stops us. There's room in theaters for our scooter chairs, and the Film Forum has tea. We can't eat the jiffy-lubed popcorn anymore, but does this mean we should be counted out? There are still Junior Mints to perfume our tooth adhesive. We can sneak in baggies of oat bran if we wait for the lights to go out. There are bathrooms.
If my baby-boomer friend is right, and he probably is, it would mean that Helen would have to be in her twenties.
If you haven't read the book, I won't write a spoiler, but I will say that a twenty-year old woman would not have anywhere near the insight that Helen has at thirty-eight, and that a twenty-year-old Helen in particular would have been too angry to entertain even a casual relationship with Hollister, given his job at the time.
W. Somerset Maugham said, "In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally."
If Hollister were in his thirties and still building a career instead of reflecting on a successful one, he wouldn't have had the time to put two and two together, nor would he have cared to. If I back up the story to the 1980s, Wall Street was enjoying one of the longest-running bull markets in history. Who cared about regulation? Companies back then would have thought that Sarbanes-Oxley was a foot creme.
Change the ages, and the whole story structure comes crashing down. There would be no resonance.
CUT TO DIRECTOR ROLLING HIS EYES. FADE TO BLACK.
This is why writers are advised to heave their manuscripts over the Nevada border in exchange for a Hollywood check, and get the next flight back where they came from. (I think it was Hemingway who originally made this observation, though I suspect Faulkner and Fitzgerald would have agreed with him.)
Raymond Chandler once said, "If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I would not have come." He also said, "In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing."
When it comes to books and plays, Hollywood does and will do what it wants. Scripts are written for audiences. Just ask Scott Spencer. And look what Lillian Hellman had to do to These Three under the Hays Code before the story could be retold as originally intended -- as The Children's Hour -- twenty-five years later.
Twenty-year-olds want to see themselves on screen. Fifty-something actors, especially if they're not aging well, are too chilling a reminder of what's to come, and what twenty-somethings want to see that? Or so the focus groups tell us.
But we want to see ourselves too, cry the baby boomers.
Stories lose something when they can't be told as intended. Screenplays are different from novels -- they have a different structure, and must be reworked extensively to retell a story in pictures. Lines of dialogue are changed, sometimes even made better. Characters are trimmed, consolidated. The lessons of revision. Consequently, the stories are similar but not the same. Studio movies cater to a perceived sensibility, tied to sales, that books can still occasionally overlook. But we hope the essence of a story, its emotion, is preserved, that Hollywood can grow more comfortable with portraying a world as it really is, as it did with Michael Clayton.
It's the story, always the story, that really matters, that should matter. Who plays each role shouldn't matter if they play it well. We want good guys to win when they're thirty. But we especially want them to win when they're fifty. They have fewer chances left.
Ah well. As Kyle MacLachlan said, "Hollywood is not good when it comes to age."
At one of the book signings for SHAKEDOWN this summer, we sat around casting the movie and had terrific fun doing it. I won't tell you who we decided on, but characters were cast at the appropriate ages. And that's how I'll remember them.
DIRECTOR: What crust.
WRITER: My bread.
DIRECTOR: Not any more.
Quotes from www.brainyquest.com. />
What, we fifty-somethings don't get off our couches to go to the movies anymore? But we're baby boomers. Nothing stops us. There's room in theaters for our scooter chairs, and the Film Forum has tea. We can't eat the jiffy-lubed popcorn anymore, but does this mean we should be counted out? There are still Junior Mints to perfume our tooth adhesive. We can sneak in baggies of oat bran if we wait for the lights to go out. There are bathrooms.
If my baby-boomer friend is right, and he probably is, it would mean that Helen would have to be in her twenties.
If you haven't read the book, I won't write a spoiler, but I will say that a twenty-year old woman would not have anywhere near the insight that Helen has at thirty-eight, and that a twenty-year-old Helen in particular would have been too angry to entertain even a casual relationship with Hollister, given his job at the time.
W. Somerset Maugham said, "In Hollywood, the women are all peaches. It makes one long for an apple occasionally."
If Hollister were in his thirties and still building a career instead of reflecting on a successful one, he wouldn't have had the time to put two and two together, nor would he have cared to. If I back up the story to the 1980s, Wall Street was enjoying one of the longest-running bull markets in history. Who cared about regulation? Companies back then would have thought that Sarbanes-Oxley was a foot creme.
Change the ages, and the whole story structure comes crashing down. There would be no resonance.
CUT TO DIRECTOR ROLLING HIS EYES. FADE TO BLACK.
This is why writers are advised to heave their manuscripts over the Nevada border in exchange for a Hollywood check, and get the next flight back where they came from. (I think it was Hemingway who originally made this observation, though I suspect Faulkner and Fitzgerald would have agreed with him.)
Raymond Chandler once said, "If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I would not have come." He also said, "In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can't read. If they could read their stuff, they'd stop writing."
When it comes to books and plays, Hollywood does and will do what it wants. Scripts are written for audiences. Just ask Scott Spencer. And look what Lillian Hellman had to do to These Three under the Hays Code before the story could be retold as originally intended -- as The Children's Hour -- twenty-five years later.
Twenty-year-olds want to see themselves on screen. Fifty-something actors, especially if they're not aging well, are too chilling a reminder of what's to come, and what twenty-somethings want to see that? Or so the focus groups tell us.
But we want to see ourselves too, cry the baby boomers.
Stories lose something when they can't be told as intended. Screenplays are different from novels -- they have a different structure, and must be reworked extensively to retell a story in pictures. Lines of dialogue are changed, sometimes even made better. Characters are trimmed, consolidated. The lessons of revision. Consequently, the stories are similar but not the same. Studio movies cater to a perceived sensibility, tied to sales, that books can still occasionally overlook. But we hope the essence of a story, its emotion, is preserved, that Hollywood can grow more comfortable with portraying a world as it really is, as it did with Michael Clayton.
It's the story, always the story, that really matters, that should matter. Who plays each role shouldn't matter if they play it well. We want good guys to win when they're thirty. But we especially want them to win when they're fifty. They have fewer chances left.
Ah well. As Kyle MacLachlan said, "Hollywood is not good when it comes to age."
At one of the book signings for SHAKEDOWN this summer, we sat around casting the movie and had terrific fun doing it. I won't tell you who we decided on, but characters were cast at the appropriate ages. And that's how I'll remember them.
DIRECTOR: What crust.
WRITER: My bread.
DIRECTOR: Not any more.
Quotes from www.brainyquest.com.
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