Dinosaur Writes (Sort Of) First Screenplay, On Steep Deadline, From (Own) First Novel

Ruminant With A View

by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring

TEANECK New Jersey—(Weekly Hubris)—3/26/12—“Tyrannosaura Scriptoloathica,” c’est moi.

And I thought I was a rara enough avis writing a first erotic novel, at 59.

Then, Mr. Smartypants Hollywood Director (you know who you are) tapped me to write the screenplay from the novel. By May 1. Which was a brutal enough deadline, I thought.

By March 1^st, I’d already written/had rejected three drafts.

THAT really put the “brute” in “brutal.”

But now, on March 18^th, with Draft Four still described (by Him Who Must Be Obeyed in California) as still in need of work, it’s crunch time. May 1^st, and Cannes, are upon me, and I have 120 pages to knock into shape. By yesterday.

I’m 60 years old, for God’s sake, have never in my life written a screenplay, let alone a successful one, and there’s no longer any wiggle room.

This isn’t a learning curve I’m facing: it’s a learning curveball.

So . . . why, exactly, am I blogging right now, and not screenplay-ing?

Because, if I have to look at my %$#@ scenario one more time today, my head will explode. So, I’m taking a break to whine online.

It’s what bloggers do, mostly. Whine-online.

One of my problems is that the scenarists (actually had to teach Mr. Smartypants that term) I admire, nay, worship—Anthony Minghella, Tom Stoppard and Robert Towne (think “The English Patient,” “Shakespeare In Love” and “Chinatown”)—are, were, all dinosaurs as well.

Like me, these writers, in their prime, were all literary types, given to lots of “directorial instruction,” Lo, unto what music was playing over what scenes; and they knew not the glories, and horrors of such software as Final Draft and Movie Magic Screenwriter.

Mr. Smartypants doubted whether my dinos did very well at the box office (well, aside from “Chinatown”). I begged to differ. He looked up the figures and, Verily, “The English Patient” and “Shakespeare in Love” not only raked in the honors but, also, the cash.

Wouldn’t today, though, opines Mr. S. And, of course, he’s right. No one would even look at scenarios not properly formatted; scenarios wherein the humble writer dared tell The Director what to do when and where.

Mr. Minghella, if there’s a Scenarists’ Heaven—and, for you, God must have created one—do not look down to see into what your art form has morphed since the mid-1990s. You would not approve: I guarantee it.

For here’s the thing.

When you read Minghella’s screenplay, an adaptation (oh, there’s an inadequate noun!) of Michael Ondaatje’s gorgeous, ethereal, haunting (well, there just aren’t enough adjectives, even were I Thomas Wolfe) novel of the same name, you see the film.

The screenplay is the film.

OK: you get Minghella, Zaentz, Ondaatje, Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Binoche, Kristin Scott Thomas, et al, together in North Africa, and you’ve got utter magic. But. Folks: The. Writers. Came. First.

Ondaatje. Then, Minghella.

THEN, everyone else.

What am I trying to say??

That Draft 4 may be unacceptable, as well?

May well be.

Finally, in existential nausea, I’ve had to find a co-writer willing to format the d$%n thing a la Final Draft.

Which he’s just—presto; while I’ve sat here whining—accomplished.

So, back to work I go.

And I will be formatting according to the software’s dictates, and chopping all the direction—the prose—from the play.

But I won’t like it.

Let’s hope Mr. Smartypants does, however.

I hope he appreciates the weirdness of a dinosaur’s having to give birth to, circumcise and then push off a cliff its own firstborn—into the waiting arms of a complete stranger; praying that that stranger will catch it, and teach it to fly (make of it a successful film).

My only consolation is that Minghella had years to write the screenplay for “The English Patient.” I’ve had a couple of months. Who knew dinosaurs could move this fast?

Author Photo: Dionisis Tsipiras; Banner Photo: Doris Athanassakis