The Understructure of Writing for Film and Television by Ben Brady & Lance Lee

Author:Ben Brady & Lance Lee [Brady, Ben]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2010-06-27T20:00:00+00:00

9. Handling Dialogue, Theme, Values, and Moral Urgency

We need to consider three final aspects of successful screenwriting: first, the proper handling of dialogue; second, the proper handling of thematic material, for a writer always writes from some point of view; and third, the related issues of values and moral urgency in good writing.

DIALOGUE

Once a drama had to be in verse, and sometimes that verse rose to poetry to express the depth of a character’s suffering or joy. Some movie adaptations of such dramas still succeed with general audiences, whether Romeo and Juliet or Euripides’ unsurpassed antiwar drama The Trojan Women. Even when verse died out as the received mode for dialogue, emphasis continued to be placed on how well characters spoke; it was believed that the urgency of a character’s needs or passions should spill over into stirring, electrifying speech.

Even now that expectation exists for plays written for the legitimate stage and for theatrical release. Ingmar Bergman’s screenplays are published without shots or screenplay format as literary works. Films like Amadeus or A Man for All Seasons possess obvious literary merit. Romeo and Juliet was adapted into West Side Story, an immensely popular stage and film musical, in which characters rise at critical moments not to Romeo or Juliet’s speeches but to equally expressive songs. Lolita remains a classic American film, distinguished by Vladimir Nabokov’s elegant and witty dialogue. Harold Pinter’s dialogue has a great deal to do with his success as a writer for both stage and screen. Comedies have for a long time depended on their writers’ invention of zany, unexpected lines. Contemporary dramas like Ordinary People or Kramer vs. Kramer are literate films that depend on their characters’ ability to speak well and to the point at critical moments. A Streetcar Named Desire invests Blanche with rare power as a character in large part because of the poetic charge of her language. The greatest weakness of Eugene O’Neill, our most famous dramatist, is the inchoate dialogue he gave his characters at critical moments.

We stress this literary aspect of good dialogue because there is a current misconception that this kind of concern with language doesn’t belong in film. That misconception is isolated from the evidence of our own good films. It is isolated from reality. Is quality in language really absent from the real world with which screenplays deal? Isn’t a moment made memorable when someone of our own acquaintance or someone in public life is moved to speak with force, elegance, intelligence, and poetic sharpness? When your characters speak with as much force, wit, or elegance as possible in a film, that film is improved, both theoretically and, as our examples show, commercially. Don’t let anyone tell you differently.

That said, three things must be emphasized about the proper nature of what a playwright does write:

1. A playwright writes an action, not words. Words are one of the primary tools, but only a tool, that help a writer create character and conflict and develop those through crisis and climax to their final revelation and resolution.

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