Review of Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990's by Patrick McGilligan

Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK. University of California Press, 2010. 252 pages.


By Patrick Charsky


Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory 5: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1990’s is shorter than his previous works. And the interviews are shorter, sometimes too short, to really provide insight into screenwriting or what it was like to be a Screenwriter in the 1990’s. Many of the scribes interviewed in Backstory 5 got their start in other decades and seem to be out of place. The book still does retain qualities to educate and appeal to aspiring or established Screenwriters.

Backstory 5 was published ten years ago and may be McGilligan’s swan song to the Backstory series. McGilligan has published widely in Film Studies. He teaches at Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Through Oral Histories McGilligan delivers another Screenwriting seminar in book form. From advice about breaking into Screenwriting, working with Directors, and adapting other material into Screenplays, Backstory 5 is replete with anecdotes and examples about working as a Screenwriter in the 1990’s.

Breaking into Screenwriting is as hard as ever in contemporary Hollywood. In Backstory 5, veteran Screenwriters talk about how to get started in the industry. Jean-Claude Carriere recommends that novice Screenwriters join a group of filmmakers. He says that writing a screenplay and sending it off to technicians is a very bad way to work. Carriere is French and his opinion seems to be more of a European way of looking at filmmaking. Still, his years of experience and legendary status as a Screenwriter makes his advice as good as gold.

Nora Ephron, one of two women Screenwriters interviewed in the book, advises would be filmmakers to study Journalism like she did. Developing a knowledge of a wide variety of subjects is the best way forward to make great films. Rudy Wurlizter, perhaps the most independent Screenwriter interviewed for the book, recommends adopting the beat ethos of seeing the World by endless travel. Both Ephron and Wurlitzer criticize Film Schools as teaching students nothing of value. Wurlitzer says “Film schools have been a disaster for writing.”

These are some of the best examples from Backstory 5 about breaking into Screenwriting. Whether it was working as a Journalist, meeting the right person, making short films, or writing novels or plays; each person had some big break which led them into the A-list class of Screenwriters. All of the Screenwriters worked for years developing their craft and steadily advancing up the ladder of success.

In previous editions of the Backstory series there has been plenty of discussion of the process of adaptation. In Backstory 5 the insights about the process of adaptation have never been clearer. In the interview with Ronald Harwood, he talks about his process of adaptation. According to Harwood the most important bit of advice is to “avoid literary pretensions in screenplays.” In one of his first adaptations for A High Wind in Jamaica he talks about how the director told him to cut down almost all of his description and let him “do the rest.”

In addition to Harwood, Richard LaGravanese has worked on some of the most memorable adaptations of the 1990’s. He talks about how it takes him a rather long time, around a year, to create the screenplay from a famous novel such as The Horse Whisperer. LaGravenese talks about how he worked closely with Robert Redford on the script. Another great interview that talks about working with big budget adaptations is with Tom Stoppard. Stoppard worked with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun, a novel by J. G. Ballard. The movie was a triumph. The sad part of all these interviews with A-list Screenwriters is that none of them has made any effort to write “spec” scripts. Spec scripts sold well in the 90’s, but have since declined with the advent of “tent poles” and franchise flicks. It is a shame that writers like Stoppard don’t see any value in coming up with original screenplays. It is sad to say that writing on spec has become an anachronism, reserved only for the very few.

Another great subject that the interviews in Backstory 5 discuss is working with Directors. For some Screenwriters it proves a big break in their careers. Jean-Claude Carriere’s collaboration with Luis Bunuel is the stuff of legend resulting in films like The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie and That Obscure Object of Desire. It was also a big stepping stone for Carriere who made some of the most memorable films to come out of Europe like The Tin Drum and The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

David Koepp received his big break by meeting with Steven Spielberg and working on several films together, including Jurassic Park and War of the Worlds. Koepp talks about his anxiousness at first working with the super-star Spielberg. He says he eventually got over being star struck and gets along fine with Spielberg. Another example of a writer getting ahead by working with a Director comes from Barbara Turner. Turner worked with Robert Altman who was a leading Director of the New Hollywood. She says that working with Altman was at times combative, but always friendly.

These interviews show that working with a Director can be very good for a Screenwriter. Often a Director is established and is able to push a project forward to completion in a way that a Screenwriter, who is often just starting out, never could. Most people don’t recognize Screenwriters, but they do know big name Directors like Spielberg, Luis Bunuel, or Robert Altman.

Backstory 5 succeeds as a history of Screenwriters and screenwriting. The interviews are on a par with the other books in the series. The questions sometimes veer into repetition, but the interviewer, whether McGilligan himself, or someone else, is always well prepared. And the interviews are always well conducted and done with utmost preparation. The insights into contemporary Hollywood or Indiewood are edifying for any Screenwriter. Only one question remains; it is 2020, Backstory 5 was published 10 years ago, will McGilligan be so kind as to create another edition to his excellent series?

Review of Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970's and 1980's by Patrick McGilligan

Backstory 4: Interview with Screenwriters of the 1970’s and 1980’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK: University of California Press, 2006. 424 pages.


By Patrick Charsky

Cinema was dying. What was to be done? In the 1970’s and 1980’s Cinema experienced a Renaissance. Film schools had produced the first generation of film school graduates, film festivals had started up in places like New York City and Cannes, France. Later in the 1970’s, multiplexes opened up across the United States bringing in young audiences. Perhaps film didn’t regain the primacy it had in the 1930’s, but in the 1970’s and 1980’s American film became better and more profitable; a new Golden Age had dawned.

In Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970’s and 1980’s, Patrick McGillgan uses oral histories to present a masterclass about the writing processes of high achieving screenwriters from The New Hollywood. From countless writers talking about page counts and adaptations, working with directors like Spielberg and Kubrick, and dealing with rejection, criticism, flops, and self doubt, McGilligan shows how the best Screenwriters broke into Movies and sustained writing careers over several decades.

Backstory 4 is the fourth installment of McGilligan’s series about screenwriters. He is the editor of Backstory 4 which also includes other interviewers Vincent LoBrutto and Nat Segalof. The book is structured into an introduction and thirteen interviews with screenwriters who wrote such hits as Star Wars, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Apocalypse Now, Bonnie and Clyde, Howard’s End, and Eyes Wide Shut.

Many screenwriters obsess over page numbers. They ask themselves questions like how many pages should I write a day? How long will it take to write a screenplay? Backstory 4 provides some guidance on this topic. The most lucid example is from Paul Mazursky. Mazursky says he writes a screenplay in three months. Two to write a first draft and one month to edit before he has a final draft. Yet, he emphasizes that screenwriting should remain organic and can’t be forced or follow too rigid rules. Backstory 4 provides some templates and advice about writing for other writers.

Throughout the book, McGilligan pries into screenwriters making them talk about their process. John Milius says he sort of knows what the conclusion is, but he doesn’t know how he’s going to get there. Many screenwriters emphasize that screenwriting grows out of an organic process. Mazursky talks about how screenwriting formulas or too many rules yield boring or overplanned screenplays that result in dull screenplays. Walter Hill highlights the process of writing an action screenplay. He states that the audience mostly knows how the film will end. The key is to keep the audience guessing along the way to the big conclusion.

Ruth Prawer Jhabvala is a master at adaptation. In her interview she talks about her process of working with James Ivory on their many literary adaptations. She says she reads the text once to get a general sense of the work, a second time she takes some notes, and the third time through she writes “long notes.” In her interview she talks about the surprising success of her adaptations A Room with a View, Howard’s End, and The Remains of the Day.

Another strong point in the writing process that McGilligan hits on again and again is working on the fly for directors. In a great story from John Milius, the writer of Apocalypse Now, he relates how he wrote a famous piece of dialogue for Steven Spielberg’s Jaws. Milius says he wrote the dialogue while Spielberg waited on the other end of the phone. It is stories like these that show how a screenwriter must be flexible with their process. In Hollywood, a writer has to be able to work quickly and effectively.

In another interview, British writer Frederic Raphael talks about his work with another famous director; Stanley Kubrick. Raphael relates how he worked closely with Kubrick for over two years on Kubrick’s last complete film; Eyes Wide Shut. In several instances Raphael had to rewrite scene after scene to meet Kubrick’s standards.

The interviews with Milius and Raphael show how the screenwriter has evolved in contemporary Hollywood. Instead of the Studio System, there is free-lance work by phone calls or being on set for an Auteur like Kubrick. Something that hasn’t changed is Hollywood’s love of good dialogue. Milius is a master of classic dialogue. From his short piece for Jaws, he has also written some of the most memorable lines in Film History.

In the best interview from the book, Walter Hill talks about his experiences from a long career in Hollywood. He speaks with the experience of a veteran filmmaker. He reminisces about his early days with Sam Peckinpah and his later days getting the Alien franchise off the ground at Fox. Hill talks about his many successes working with producers like Michael Eisner. The back and forth between higher ups on the production chain and writer-directors working in the trenches details the ups and downs while working with the big studios. Hill shows how making a film in Modern Hollywood can be difficult, but very rewarding.

It is Hill’s mastery of the process of filmmaking that makes his interview so well done. He can talk about the business of making films and the process of creating them with equal ease. He shows how persistence, mastery of the craft, and a diplomatic mindset can result in successful films like 48 Hours, Alien, and Tales From the Crypt. Screenwriters can learn a lot from Walter Hill.

The process of writing screenplays is an arduous undertaking. These high achievers make it look easy. They have refined their craft through writing numerous screenplays and studying and watching films and books. Many struggle with things common to artists. Financial insecurity. Bad reviews and flops. Problems with continuing to write or getting started. Reading through these interviews is like sitting in on a graduate seminar in Screenwriting. So many great bits of advice.


In Backstory 4, McGilligan shows a new generation of screenwriters with an unprecedented love and appreciation for not just films, but the craft of writing screenplays. It is an excellent foray into a screenwriters writing process, the struggle to attain security, and the bumpy relationships with directors and producers. Or within themselves as they direct their own projects. McGilligan brings deep insight into the rise of the screenwriter from a mere contract writer to Auteur status as writer-directors commanding big money for their scripts. Hollywood would never be the same.

Review of Backstory 2: Interview with Screenwriters of the 1940's and 1950's

Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940’s and 1950’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK: University of California Press, 1991. 417 pages.

By Patrick Charsky

Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory 2: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1940’s and 1950’s is another triumph in his Backstory series. Through many stories, anecdotes, and advice about Screenwriting, Backstory 2 shows how a select group of Screenwriters managed to live, write, and sustain careers in a time of the Black List and dramatic change in Hollywood. In this review I will present three points that prove the thesis that McGilligan’s book is a success.

The first point concerns writing advice from the group of Screenwriters interviewed for Backstory 2. The second point is about how the Black List affected writers while it was enforced. The last point is about the changes that the Screenwriters endured. On each point there are many examples from the Screenwriters in the book which are informative and lively.

Backstory 2 is similar to Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The book reveals many little known writers who wrote some of the classic films of the 40’s and 50’s. Movies like Rebel without a Cause, The Way We Were, and From Here to Eternity. These films are classics that reflect the time period in which they were made.

These Oral Histories are a joy and a pleasure to read and will prove edifying to anyone with an interest in Screenwriting, Film History, or Hollywood. When I read the book, at times, it felt like going to a writers conference for Screenwriters. So much good advice about writing, about working in the “industry.” Richard Brooks, Garsin Kanin, Arthur Laurents, Philip Yordan, and many others told of their experiences writing screenplays at a time when the “Big Studios” were in decline. Garsin Kanin said the worst thing a writer could do “is to read a newspaper” when starting out to write. I thought that was an interesting comment. What I thought was good habit, Kanin describes as a bad habit.

Almost all of them said they constantly re-write. A good habit, but the hardest part of writing is editing your own work. Arthur Laurents talks about making movies that are meaningful and profitable. He says it’s difficult, but it can be done. Staying true to oneself is of utmost importance to Laurents and it shows in his few, but very well done, films such as Westside Story and The Way We Were. Both films standout as classics with numerous awards, critical praise, and big box office numbers.

The second point which makes Backstory 2 a success and a must read for Screenwriters, Film Historians, and others, is McGilligan’s treatment of how the Black List affected Screenwriters. The interview with Ben Maddow stands out the most. Maddow was on the Black List and couldn’t find work for a solid decade. In the interview, Maddow is evasive and refuses to talk about whether he was a member of the Communist Party. Or whether he named names in the late 1950’s to a California Congressman. It is an excellent interview full of intrigue, perhaps the best interview in the book. Arthur Laurents was also Black Listed. Laurents kept working on Broadway and away from Hollywood. He didn’t seem to be affected as deeply as Maddow was by the Black List.

In McGilligan’s introduction he cites several books for further reading about the Black List. He has a special interest in the History of the Black List in Hollywood. In several interviews there is talk of how the Black List hovered like a dark cloud over Hollywood and rained particularly hard on Screenwriters. His treatment of the Black List shows the injustice that was done to Screenwriters. McGilligan shows how it ruined careers, caused psychological harm, and stomped all over the constitutional right to freedom of speech.

In contrast to McGilligan’s Backstory 1 where writers were struggling to get credits and have successful films which extended their contracts, Screenwriters in the 40’s and 50’s were a new generation where most writers didn’t have contracts. The contract writer became an “endangered species,” according to W. R. Burnett. The Studio system went into steep decline after the rise of television and an anti-trust court ruling that forced the studios to give up control of theater chains. The Big Studios never recovered. The decline of the studios only complicated matters for Screenwriters. Several interviewees were refugees from Hitler’s Germany. Their stories related how they moved to Hollywood and had to start over. Fleeing Nazis, writing clandestinely under the Black List, the rise of TV, all of these factors were obstacles that Screenwriters had to overcome to find long term success and financial stability. Both of which were elusive even to the most cunning like Philip Yordan.

The book is well put together. From one Screenwriter like Arthur Laurents, who writes mostly Romantic movies with many song and dance numbers, to a writer like Curt Siodmak who wrote horror films like Frankenstein meets Wolf Man; still others like Richard Brooks and Stewart Stern who wrote about Political and Social issues similar to the Italian Neo-Realists. The book has a diversity of writers and an attention to detail that left me very pleased after having read it.

I would highly recommend the book to anyone interested in Screenwriting, the History of Screenwriting or Screenwriters. It was like meeting each individual writer and listening to them talk about how they write and how they feel about the movies they made, the business side of Hollywood, and, in some cases the most famous people of the day; like Marlon Brando and Jimmy Dean. A fascinating study.

Review of Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60's

Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60’s. Patrick McGilligan. London, UK: University of California Press, 1997. 428 pages.

By Patrick Charsky

The blacklist hovered over Hollywood during the 1950’s like a storm cloud casting a shadow on many careers of not just actors and directors, but most egregiously, Screenwriters. In the third installment of Patrick McGilligan’s Backstory series, he shows how the blacklist affected writers like Walter Bernstein and Ring Lardner, Jr. So much so that they have long gestations in the list of their credits. The Front, Bernstein’s revenge film against McCarthyism in Hollywood, shows the injustice done to writers who held a different set of beliefs and should have been protected by their constitutional rights. Instead they were persecuted in a witch-hunt that McGilligan documents in his interviews with Screenwriters affected by the blacklist and in his other book Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist

Fortunately, in Backstory 3, McGilligan shows how the blacklist ended and writers who were affected by it became folk heroes for sticking to their principles in a time of deep distress. The Screenwriters who outlived the blacklist may have had their right to work in Hollywood restored, but they never got back the many years of productivity that might have been.

Backstory 3 follows the same format that the previous two editions in the series use. McGilligan uses oral histories in the form of interviews to create another triumph about Hollywood writers. The anecdotes about celebrities, production stories about acquiring properties or getting assignments, and advice from veteran writers create an absorbing book sure to be liked by any Screenwriter, whether up and coming, or established. There are many lessons to be learned.

McGilligan’s book about Screenwriters from Hollywood of the 1960’s sees celebrity culture in full bloom. In Backstory 1 the book is littered with stories about the moguls, rarely a story about stars. In Backstory 3 there is an abundance of anecdotes about celebrities. John Michael Hayes talks about his relationship with Alfred Hitchcock. Hayes confirms, like Charles Bennett the Golden Age Screenwriter, that Hitchcock was an ego maniac and would see to it that no one got as much publicity as Hitch. Hayes worked with Hitch on four films, including, perhaps, Hitch’s greatest film, Rear Window. It is stories about Hitch which could be applied to any relationship between a famous director and a novice Screenwriter. Movies in the 60’s were dominated by Auteur theory where the director commanded the production and received top billing.

The interviews serve a purpose of edification for Screenwriters learning the business. Arnold Schulman’s experiences might have been terrible, but others talk of positive collaborations with directors. In Wendell Mayes’ interview he talks glowingly of working with Otto Preminger. He talks about the writing process with Preminger. Preminger liked to write part by part, editing each sequence as it was written. In another positive instance of a Screenwriter working with a Director, Terry Southern’s interview goes into detail about his relationship with Stanley Kubrick. He relates an anecdote about Kubrick picking him up in a limo and working with him in the early morning light on the screenplay for Dr. Strangelove.

McGiillgian reinforces the fact that Film is a collaborative art. Writers and Directors have to work together to create films. Writers like Schulman or Ravetch and Frank, Jr. are careful about who they work with. They are instances of writers who are selective and only work on their terms. Other writers, especially beginners, should heed their examples and learn that they don’t have to sell their souls to succeed in Screenwriting.

Others like Walon Green seem to work with anyone. Green was very flexible and productive, but, perhaps, not on his own terms. Whereas the Ravetches made films like Stanley and Iris, and Norma Rae, Green and others like him made big productions like Robocop 2. Stirling Silliphant, who was the most successful screenwriter interviewed, wrote The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno which were disaster films with big budgets. He still had time to make such critically acclaimed movies as In the Heat of the Night and A Walk in the Spring Rain. McGilligan shows that Screenwriters in the 60’s experienced a wide range of success with a variety of projects. Some were content with a smaller workload and financial outcome. Others worked all the time to get their names in the limelight with more money in their pockets, but had to endure the vicissitudes of the box office.

In addition to anecdotes about working with some of the most famous names in Hollywood there are also many stories about how screenplays were made. Jay Presson Allen talks about how she acquired the book The Prince of the City. In her telling she talks about buying the rights after another filmmaker didn’t adapt the book and let the option on it expire. Presson goes into detail about how she worked as a script doctor, a job several writers in the book worked at. On The Verdict, an academy award winning legal drama, she rewrote a number of parts. In the end, like many other script doctors, she ended up with money, no credit, and the script she wrote wasn’t used at all.

Many of the writers interviewed had projects fall through. One lesson that the book imparts to would be screenwriters is that success doesn’t come easy and it rarely lasts. Terry Southern was a very hot screenwriter in the 1960’s. He wrote two classics of 60’s Hollywood; Dr. Strangleove and Easy Rider. Still he was hard put to find work after the 1960’s. His screenplays weren’t produced, he couldn’t make anything happen. His attempt to turn William Burroughs novel Junkie into a film totally floundered. Many of the screenwriters from the 60’s didn’t last beyond that decade. George Axelrod, like Southern, was a very hot screenwriter who wrote the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s and, among others, The Seven Year Itch starring Marilyn Monroe.

The book is replete with stories about how screenwriters work. Stirling Silliphant says he writes everyday, five pages a day until he has a good first draft. Arnold Schulman wears a kimono and lays on the floor when he writes. In contrast to the screenwriters of the Golden Age or even the 40’s and 50’s all of the writers from the 60’s worked at home wherever they lived or were at the time; Los Angeles, New York, London, Thailand, New England. The days of working in the office had become obsolete. So had the contract writer. No more did writers get a weekly salary. There was still rewriting another writer’s work, but not as much as in the past.

Screenwriters in the 60’s had a variety of options; TV was booming, movies were still strong, and if they were creative enough they wrote novels, or plays. Richard Matheson, the most productive writer of the interviewees, wrote many films and novels in the Science Fiction genre. When I read his interview he reminded me of Philip K. Dick. Screenwriters in the 60’s had less restrictions, perhaps less stability, but greater freedom of expression and artistic license. If a screenwriter could write for television, then they would be more financially stable. For the purists from theater, or novels, the road to Hollywood recognition was rougher.

McGilligan’s Backstory 3 builds upon the accomplishments of his previous two books in his Backstory series. It educates, entertains, and memorializes the lives and careers of Screenwriters who are often overlooked when Film History is written. The book is essential to anyone looking to understand Screenwriting as an art and business. And to also understand the lives, struggles, brilliant successes, and harrowing failures of some of the best screenwriters who ever worked in Hollywood.

 

Review of Backstory 1 by Patrick McGilligan (1986)

Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood’s Golden Age. By Patrick McGilligan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. 382 pages.

By Patrick Charsky

When Film Historians look back to the beginning of sound Cinema one hundred years from now where will they look for information about how it really was? Will they look to the Moguls or Movie Stars? Perhaps. Some searching for a deeper understanding will come to Patrick McGlligan’s excellent foray into Hollywood lore; Backstory1. Backstory is the first in a series of five books about Screenwriters working in Hollywood.

In searching for information about the Golden Age of Hollywood, Historians will seek out Screenwriters to learn from the soldiers of the motion picture industry. They will search out writers’ voices who never had a voice in a time when Hollywood reigned supreme over the World. McGilligan accomplishes this feat grandly. He shows a range of opinions and stories from the people you never heard of, but who made possible some of the best films ever made.

The review will consider three aspects of the book. First it will look at the different kinds of voices in the book. From “Company men and a woman”, to Screenwriters admittedly on the Left, and to odd balls who worked outside of the system or were blacklisted and had their screenwriting career ended. The second part of the review will discuss the accuracy of the information the screenwriters talk about. There is a lot of squabbling over those precious credits; who wrote Gone With the Wind? Who came up with the unforgettable ending of Casablanca? Lastly we will consider if the Golden Age Screenwriters are still relevant to contemporary Cinema.

Patirck McGilligan has written extensively about Cinema. In addition to Backstory 1, there are four other books in the series that document Screenwriters’ lives and work. A prolific biographer, he has published books about Hollywood celebrities like Clint Eastwood, Jack Nicoholson, and Mel Brooks. He is an adjunct Professor at Marquette University’s Film and TV Department.

The book is unique in its treatment of Screenwriters. Never before has a book gone so far as to arrange and allow Screenwriters to be heard. There have been other books about the Golden Age. McGilligan references these in his first rate introduction to the book, which serve as primary sources for further reading. Backstory reveals a treasure trove of early sound films to epic masterpieces from the 1950’s. If there ever was a course about the Golden Age of Hollywood, Backstory 1 could serve as a primary text for students.

One of the strengths of Backstory 1 is its diversity of voices from the Golden Age. The book is structured around sixteen interviews with Screenwriters who were successful to one degree or another in the Studio System that prevailed at the time they were working. The interviews give voice to Screenwriters who were known as lowest on the totem pole of the Studio System.

Some of the writers had worked for twenty years or more for a specific studio. W. R. Burnett worked in the Studio System from the earliest days of talkies. In his interview, he says he didn’t want to be a “company man” because that would engender ill feelings toward him from other writers. His interview shows what it was like to work with studio heads. It is incisive, funny, and deeply informed; his memory is crystal clear. Another screenwriter who worked in the studio system was Lenore Coffee. She was the only female screenwriter to have worked in the studio system documented in the book. Her interview provides a glimpse into a woman’s view of the Golden Age of Hollywood. She worked on “Women’s” pictures mostly. Her career started out in the Silent era but progressed into feature films as the age of “Talkies” dawned. Chatacteristially she avoided any talk of politics.

Opposite of her was John Lee Mahin. Mahin worked in the Studio System during its heyday, he contributed to Gone With the Wind, and knew Victor Fleming well enough to tell an interesting anecdote about Vic being exasperated with the production and giving up. Later he would be wooed back to finish the famous last scene in Gone With the Wind by Vivien Leigh and Clark Gable. Casey Robinson was another “company man.” He grew into such a success that he was making five thousand dollars a week at Metro. Despite the money, he quit because according to Robinson, “Metro is the graveyard of writers.”

These interviews comprise stories about what their lives were like, mostly how much they got paid. It also details their interactions with studio heads like Cecil B. DeMille, Daryl F. Zanuck, and Howard Hughes. Each has their own view of Hollywood and the politics of the times. Mahin was a staunch Conservative who had no sympathy for the “Hollywood Ten.” Burnett felt similarly, but was more sympathetic. Through these interviews the deep Conservatism of the big studios is revealed. If you were a Communist, or sympathizer, working for the big studios wasn’t going to last long. If you worked at organizing writers, then your career would be compromised.

The next group of interviews reveals a Left-wing in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Writers like Julius J. Epstein, Richard Maibaum, Philip Dunne, and Donald Ogden Stewart. Each of these screenwriters professed to be staunch Liberals who supported Roosevelt or, later on, Adlai Stevenson. Epstein worked for Warners most of his early career. He wrote the classic Casablanca with his brother. Whether he wrote the famous ending is a matter of controversy. Maibaum was the genius behind the adaptation of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novels. Maibaum and Epstein are both self-deprecating and humble about their grand accomplishments in Screenwriting. Dunne is equally humble about his many years writing for Fox. Dunne wrote some of the most memorable films of the 1950’s, even though he is not so proud about them. Dunne was deeply involved in the politics of his time, but remained a gentleman through and through in his interview. Lastly, Donald Ogden Stewart may have been the most Left of all the interviewees in the book. Stewart’s screenwriting career was ended prematurely by the HUAC controversy and he was unable to write after 1949. It is a tragedy that his talent was never allowed to bloom further.

The next batch of Screenwriters from the Golden Age are unique in that they were from a different country, chose to work free-lance, or had some success, or were a couple that chose to leave Hollywood and return to Broadway.

James M. Cain was a very well known novelist who tried to work in Hollywood for many years with some success. His novel The Postman Always Rings Twice was a success commercially and was heralded as one of the great hard boiled novels of all time.. The film has been produced four times; twice in Hollywood, once in France and another time in Italy by Luchino Visconti.

Norman Krasna was ahead of his time. He wrote completely free-lance in an era where the contract writer was the standard way to work in the Studio System. Krasna went on to great success with many hits, his major theme being mistaken identity. Many of his films were risque for 1930’s and 40’s.

Charles Bennett was from England. He is the only non-American to be interviewed for Backstory. He endured hardship many times, but found success working with Hitchcock on his early films, and with Cecil B. DeMille on his WWII films. Goodrich and Hackett were a married couple with deep ties to theater. They penned some of the best romantic comedies of the era including Father of the Bride.

These last group of writers show that it wasn’t required to work as a contract writer to have success in Hollywood. For Krasna and the Hacketts straddling the nation with gigs in both Hollywood and Broadway were their way of succeeding as writers. It is rare for that to happen in contemporary times. James M. Cain, despite being a big name in Europe as a novelist, was never enormously successful in screenwriting. He spent the later part of his life in suburban Maryland and said he never watched his movies or hardly any movies for that matter.

Many of these writers spent years trying to make it work in the Studio System. With rare exception they left after many years of struggle, worn down by constant criticism, writing by committee, and pictures that flopped. They turned back to theater or novel writing from which they had come. The most successful turned out films that never won awards or critical acclaim. Many worked as “fixers” on screenplays, brought in like mercenaries to re-write screenplays that had problems. The stories they tell aren’t of lavish lifestyles, but of working on film after film for a credit. Some of the screenwriters were bitter about their time in Hollywood.

Another area where multiple voices are expressed in Backstory is on the subject of credits. As McGilligan explains working in the Studio System was more writers by committee than the Auteurs we have in Cinema today. Before reading the book I only knew one screenwriter from the whole list; Julius J. Epstein. He wrote, with his brother Philip, Casablanca. However, in the book Casey Robinson claims he had found the play Everybody Comes to Rick’s, the play on which the movie is based, before the Epstein’s ever thought of writing the script. He also claims that he wrote the famous ending between Bogart and Bergman. Further along, Howard Koch says he had a role in writing the script. A claim refuted by Epstein in his interview. Epstein says Koch had nothing to do with writing Casablanca. It is controversies like these that make Backstory essential reading and important in deciding who gets those all important credits and the awards that may follow.

John Lee Mahin relays another story about credits. This time it is about Gone With the Wind. Mahin says he wrote some of Gone With the Wind but was uncredited. W. R. Burnett and Mahin both worked on Scarface (1931) where there were six credited writers on IMDB.com. Movies with multiple credits were all too common in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Perhaps this is why writers were so frustrated and movies not taken seriously as literature.

It’s A Wonderful LIfe was written primarily by Goodrich and Hackett, but there are four other credits listed for the screenplay on IMDB.com including the director Frank Capra. Goodrich and Hackett said they had a terrible time working with Capra and swore they would never work with him again.

In the Golden Age credits meant everything. Having your name on a film could lead to greater pay, greater roles like director or producer, or bigger projects as a writer. Prior to Auteur theory, the Golden Age meant a rabid scramble for screen credits. Backstory shows just how important those credits were to Screenwriters. They had to fight for recognition and many times, as is evidenced in the book, they took uncredited contribution rather than have their name roll past in the opening of the film.

Backstory gives a voice to the voiceless or now dead Screenwriters of the Golden Age. Everyone remembers Coppola or Tarrantino, but who remembers Philip Dunne, Norman Krasna, or Niven Busch? It is the great success of this book to reveal the great writers of the Golden Age who were undervalued and unappreciated during their time.

Why study The Golden Age of Hollywood? Why read McGilligan’s Backstory 1? I think Backstory 1 is not only an essential text for Screenwriters, but also for anyone who wants to understand the origins of Hollywood. The Studio System is long dead. Laid to waste by the advent of Television. The contract writer has morphed into the free-lancer. The studios taken over by large conglomerates.

Still issues of gender, freedom of expression, working conditions for writers, and what it means to be a success permeate not just The Golden Age but today’s contemporary media industry. Backstory 1 shows how writers fought for those things they thought were important. Many of them paid a dear price during the McCarthyism of the 40’s and 50’s.

With Independent movie theaters closing all over the country and Disney controlling 38% of box office, it is a very trying time to be Screenwriter. It makes the “bad old days” of the Golden Age look like a better time. Working as a contract writer while the studios cranked out hundreds of films a year seems much better than long periods of unemployment in an intensely competitive business. The “bad old days?” They never had it so good.

Book Review of Kazan on Directing by Elia Kazan (2009)

Kazan on Directing. By Elia Kazan. New York: Random House Publishing, 2009. 329 Pages.

By Patrick Charsky

Elia Kazan was a better director than Orson Welles. Many critics cite Citizen Kane as the best film ever made. However, On the Waterfront makes Citizen Kane look old and thin. Kazan’s life’s work was more robust and superior to Welles who made a few films of little impact after Citizen Kane. In Kazan’s own words, his thoughts about Mr. Welles, “In Mr. Welles’ productions there is a certain vitality and energy, but no total meaning, no sense of the thick fabric of life, of it’s real BODY. Welles reduced theater to theatricalism, and this is anemic fare.”

Elia Kazan was the best actor’s director of twentieth century American drama. Through the application of “the method” he brought a deeper characterization than had ever been seen on a stage or at a movie theater. This review will focus on his treatment of seminal characters which he dramatized in several famous plays and movies.

Kazan on Directing is Elia Kazan’s life work as a director put into book form. The chapters focus on his productions for theater in part one and his movie productions in part two. In the final section, Kazan goes into detail about the pleasures of directing and what it takes to become a director. The most interesting parts of the book are his notes about characters from his most famous productions. Blanche DuBois from A Streetcar Named Desire, Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman, Terry Malloy from On the Waterfront, and Cal Trask from East of Eden. These are his best efforts at directing and his greatest characters brought to life.

The Group Theater is where Kazan cut his teeth as a director. He started out as an actor but quickly moved into directing. At the time, The Group Theater was created to rival the Soviet Union’s theater group led by Stanislavsky. Kazan learned directing by learning “The Method.” “The Method” was based around principles that reflected human behavior on the stage realistically. Kazan was heavily influenced by Marxism. It shows in his notes about his early productions, especially his direction of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons and Death of a Salesman. According to editor Cornfield, “For a decade the Group Theatre members argued and fought among themselves, broke into factions that hated and admired, despised and adored each other, but their approach was at base steadily coherent enough to revolutionize American Theatre and consequently American Film.”

A Streetcar Named Desire was Kazan’s legendary production. He made a stage production and the film version with essentially the same cast, except Vivien Leigh took over the role of Blanche Dubois from Jessica Tandy. Kazan’s characterization of Blanche Dubois shines with a newfound depth that hadn’t been seen in American Theater before. Kazan believed that Blanche was an “anachronism.” She was living in a fantasy World of the nineteenth century American South. Kazan writes in his notes about the character of Blanche ``She is a refuge, punch drunk, and on the ropes, making her last stand, trying to keep up a gallant front, because she is a proud person.” It is only when she is raped by Stanley Kowalski that her World is finally violated and no hope is left. Through sexual violence, and her sex life, the sad character of Blanche is revealed. Her sexuality is the central characteristic which draws the audience to her. Kazan’s analysis was an in-depth exposition of a woman’s desire or need for protection from a male. A value of the Old South, a value to be obliterated by a New South more violent, in the form of the “sexual terrorist” Marlon Brando as Stanley.

In his notes, Kazan compares Blanche to Scarlett O’Hara. I think this is a great comparison since both women are beholden to the old values of a civilization that has ceased to exist. Only Scarlett lived during the time of it’s last gasp for air. Blanche lives in it like a fantasy. Both women are not allowed to assert their rights, they must depend on men for their survival. Scarlett marries three times and survives the Civil War and Reconstruction. Blanche has a different fate; she doesn’t succeed in finding a man to protect her, she is fired from her job as an English teacher, rejected by Karl Malden, and finally committed to an asylum.

Kazan does an excellent job of finding the “spine” of Blanche’s character. Kazan had to work hard with Vivien Leigh to adopt his theory of Blanche. Before Kazan and Leigh worked together, Leigh had been portraying Blanche in a different way from what Kazan wanted. Leigh eventually adapted to Kazan’s method and she won an Oscar for her performance. Kazan’s method was to use psychology to show Blanche’s life of desperation, rejection, and alienation.

The other legendary character that Kazan brings to life is Terry Malloy from On the Waterfront. Marlon Brando’s performance shows a man who was deeply troubled by his life. The famous scene where Terry and his brother ride in a car and Charley must kill his brother or risk his own life exposes what Terry has become “a liability.” He pleads with his brother “I could been somebody. I coulda been a contender.” Kazan analyzes the character of Terry in comparison to Stanley Kowalski, he writes that Terry is “deeply troubled inside, alone, abandoned, betrayed, and he needs help. Kowalski needs nothing.” Terry Malloy is an extension of Kazan who testified in front of the HUAC committee. Terry testifies before the New York City Crime Commission. What Terry goes through symbolizes what Kazan went through. The beating Terry gets from the gangsters who control the waterfront physicalizes the ostracism that Kazan endured from the theater and film communities because he named names.

Kazan and screenwriter Bud Schulberg both endured acrimony from their HUAC testimony. Cornfield writes of the beating scene’s symbolism “the brutal beating that Friendly and his henchmen give Terry might be it’s most ‘Kazan’ moment, his complaint and his pained expression of injustice” Instead of a beating Kazan’s reputation suffered blows that he would never entirely recover from. He did have some form of revenge against his adversaries “the financial and critical success of the film was Kazan’s revenge on the ‘Hollywood system,’ and he was particularly happy to accept his Academy Award in New York rather than in Hollywood.”

It was a bittersweet few years for Kazan, he had achieved enormous success. Ten years later, however, Kazan would struggle to find films to make and endured significant opprobrium in the press and filmmaking communities. After America, America Kazan directed a number of flops and his directing career ended with an adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon.

It seemed that History would forget Elia Kazan. “The Method” would be subsumed by franchise stars and megamergers in Hollywood. Kazan is the best actors’ director of twentieth century American drama. Today that sounds like an ailment to be avoided. But in Kazan’s time it was a worthy title to be coveted. Kazan is the most famous proponent of the method acting style. He will always be remembered for using the Stanislavsky based method. It will stand as a testament to realism in theater and film. HIs use of “The Method” brought about two award winning roles in Blanche Dubois and Terry Malloy. Among many of Kazan’s characters these two stand as his best work as a director.

Similar to his peers William Wyler, Orson Welles, and Roberto Rosselini, Kazan was an innovator of stage and screen. His production of All My Sons and Death of a Salesman rival those of Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives. His films have more substance than Welles’ Citizen Kane. And he is just as much a proponent of Realism as Rosselini was in his groundbreaking Paisan. He stands alone among twentieth century directors for his commitment to the method, to acting, and to realism. Kazan wrote about what must be done when searching out a piece of drama “you have to dig down past the dead leaves, the pretty dead leaves, the twigs, the gay green grass, the sod itself- down to the heart of the drama and TEST THAT.”

In this era of franchise tent poles and Superhero films, Kazan seems outdated and forgotten. The question presents itself, will Kazan be remembered? Will his characters and his method be forgotten? Will they someday have a renaissance? If a student is led to Vivien Leigh or Marlon Brando, they will discover Elia Kazan. They will discover his work, his plays, his films. Kazan will not be forgotten, nor his contributions to directing, he will live on in the hearts and minds of anyone who wants to make serious dramatic works.