| [BACK]
Sometimes it's good not to tell too many people you're a screenwriter. Especially people who are close to you like relatives, co-workers and in-laws. Whether they're well-meaning, insensitive or ignorant some of these people (who aren't writers) see nothing wrong with bringing up the name of a successful movie and asking you "Why can't you write something like My Big Fat Greek Wedding?"
I personally got a lot of that when Being John Malkovich was released. Number One: I loved Being John Malkovitch. So did most people. Why? Maybe because it was different, highly original and unpredictable. Maybe because the casting was dead on. Maybe because the director did a great job. Maybe because the cinematographer made it look so good.
All I know is that Being John Malkovitch was a unique movie experience. I remember hearing that it took something like seven years to get a greenlight for it. Duh! I wonder why? What I also remember was not a few people I know, including producers who should know better, saying to me "Why can't you write something like that?"
The reason I and every other screenwriter can't write "something like that" is because we don't, didn't and never had the sensibilities of Charlie Kaufman, the author.
All of us are only capable of coming up with the ideas our experience and imagination allows us. I don't know who Charlie Kaufman's muse is. But she seems to work for him.
I used to get upset when someone would ask me why I didn't write THAT or come up with SUCH AND SUCH an idea. Depending on the person I'd go into a diatribe on the ramifications of how scripts get bought and rewritten and so on. Now I just let it go. I'm not Charlie Kaufman. Neither are you. I don't know what kind of stuff he was writing when he first started out. Maybe he's always been travelling down his own path. Maybe he had to wait a long time for success to come.
Whatever vision he has, he writes it. That's all any of us can do. That's why I've never heard one writer ask another write "Why can't you write something like that?"
We know better.
|
