Tom Williams
Wiltshire
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Comment on: Where have all the screenwriters gone?
The specific argument of the article is about the lack of ORIGINAL screenplays that make it to the screen, which reveals a fundamental flaw in the mindset of the British film industry (and probably in Hollywood, too). The idea that, because a story works well as a novel or on stage, it will work by default on the screen, as a film or as a TV adaptation, is myopic and naive. Unfortunately, it is an all-too-common form of arse-covering among the producers, development community and subsidy funds who are then able to point to the sales achieved by the book so that, when the film bombs, they will still have a job. It breaks my heart to see great, original screenplay ideas, many of them modestly budgeted, consistently overlooked as producers throw their money into the fifth, tenth, twentieth drafts of 'big' novels which, in many cases, will never make a satisfying movie. I read countless drafts of Foucault's Pendulum, which was in development for years at Fine Line, when an eight year old could have told you it would never be a movie. We should talk about this at Cheltenham and see what reception there is to a shift in mindset among producers: that organic, created-for-the-screen stories should be given a fair shot alongside high profile interlopers from other art forms.
