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Friday, November 30, 2007

If We Didn't Write It, You Couldn't Quote It!

"Of all the lousy gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine," "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn," "I'd kiss you but I've just washed my hair," "It's hard to believe so much shite could come out of one dog," "Beautiful? She was genetically engineered by super aliens in a secret underground lab on the planet Attractive, deep in the Fuck Me, She's Gorgeous nebula!" Okay, so maybe the last line isn't famous (it's from a still-unproduced TToH script), but these lines wouldn't be a part of our lives if a writer didn't write them.

Writers do get a raw deal. There's an old joke that goes something like this: A list of people who will make changes to your script ...
The producer.
The director.
The script editor.
The actor.
The guy who brings the coffee.
Anyone on set that day.
You.

Whenever a film comes out, the first question usually is 'what's it about?', the next question is invariably one of the following: 'who's in it?' and 'who directed it?' What we seem to forget is that film is story - we go to the flicks to catch a good (if we're lucky) yarn - and you don't have a story without a writer. Nobody would be making money if a writer didn't sit down and type the words 'fade in'. Writers are forgotten. Who wrote Casablanca?

The Irish Playwright And Screenwriter's Guild converged on the Sony and 20th Century Fox offices on Wednesday to show their support for the WGA strike stateside. Striking to "put a value on their creativity, their work and their stories," there was a decent turn out and you can watch some of that footage, courtesy of the Irish Playwright And Screenwriter's Guild Blog. There is also more footage from around the globe at Youtube's Day Of Support.


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Murray Burnett, Joan Alison, Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch and Casey Robinson (uncredited).

The Unquiet Man said...

Ah, IMDB. It's a beautiful thing, no?