William Boyd - Bamboo - Essays and Criticism

You also get the impression from screenwriting manuals that if the spec writer doesn’t place the heroine in jeopardy on page twenty then the executives aren’t going to read any more of the script. Or even that much.

And not just spec writers. As a gun-for-hire screenwriter you can find yourself having to do things which you regard as mind-bogglingly stupid to satisfy some berk at the studio. In my opinion, these screenwriting courses are designed so executives can come back from them and say knowing things to writers about “character arcs” and “three-act structure.” It’s just jargon, really. Why not have a five-act structure, like Shakespeare? I don’t know any screenwriter who doesn’t regard these courses as laughable, but they have to take the jargon on board because they know they’ll go into meetings with people who’ll be spouting it. Fundamentally, all these decisions are to do with telling a story. Does the story demand that the heroine should be in jeopardy after twenty minutes? That’s the only true criterion.

Do you have a rigid writing routine?

I do for writing novels. I have the same approach for screenwriting, to a degree, in that I spend a long time figuring everything out before I start. That’s true whether it’s an adaptation or an original. As a rule, I make notes and draw diagrams and do scene lists, so that when I sit down to write the script I have the whole thing planned. From page one, I know exactly how it’s going to end. Then I write the first draft as quickly as possible, which may only take two or three weeks, because compared to a novel a screenplay is so short. There are maybe 10,000 words in a screenplay: a couple of chapters, if that. And then I can look at the 110 pages and reorder them and fiddle around with them. That’s where the similarity ends, in a way, because the script is now at a stage to show people and talk about. It’s unfinished in the sense of, “Who’s going to direct it?” or, “Who’s going to put money into it?” You know that there’s going to be more changes required, so you consciously don’t make it word perfect.

Though you have said that the first draft should be fairly close to the final draft.

I think so. You shouldn’t submit a first draft which wouldn’t make a perfectly good film. There are always changes — often nothing to do with the story but to do with the input you get from the producer and the director and the actors — but if in a parallel universe the film company said, “We’ll make this,” the draft which you present should be the film which you want, not just something “along the right lines.” Then, if you’re going to make changes, they’re usually not substantial. One of my working maxims is, “All intelligent suggestions gratefully received,” but if you present something which is polished then it has to be really quite a bright idea for you to say, “Actually, you’re right.” If somebody says, “I don’t like the ending,” you say, “Why? Come up with a better one.” That sort of script note drives you mad: “I just feel the character of Julie isn’t sufficiently developed.” “Really? In what particular areas? Because I think she’s pretty damn developed.” There’s an endless process of tinkering required as the various investors are given notes by their script readers, and one of the main attractions of being a writer-director is that you can say, “The director is very happy with this script as it stands.” But if you’re working with people you’re sympathetic with, that process is mostly beneficial. We did a lot of work on Armadillo before we submitted it to the BBC, so the notes which came back were pretty valid — or else we had cogent counter-arguments if we thought that some suggestion was a mistake.

When you choose to adapt something or are offered something to adapt, do you respond to the material in an emotional or an intellectual way?

I suspect the two are related. If a story appeals to me, it’s bound to have things in common with the stories I write myself, to a greater or lesser degree. As a novelist you always write the books that you would like to read yourself, so that feeling probably governs your choice of commissioned work too: “I wouldn’t mind seeing this movie.” I don’t think I would write a horror film, for example, because I don’t particularly enjoy that genre, but there are all sorts of other genres I would tackle. You might not think I’d like to write a Western, but I’ve got this very dark Western in mind. Your choice is shaped by your own tastes and inclinations, and if you’re not intrigued or stimulated then sure as hell the work you do is going to be similarly lacklustre.

2001

The First-time Film Director: An A-Z

Anxiety. No, let’s not beat about the bush, high anxiety. It is 6.30 in the morning, early in November 1998, and I am being driven down the M4 towards Bray Studios, near Windsor, where, in an hour or so, we will begin filming my first film as director, The Trench. What am I thinking about? The first shot? No. I spent two months last summer storyboard-ing the entire film. I have planned every single shot — from the bravura to the minuscule — the film demands. So why am I so nervous? Maybe because I am starting, the new boy, and everybody else, who is hugely experienced, will be watching to see what I do and how I perform. I feel the indigestion mount and suck on a mint. I sense the worry in me course through my body like a bacillus, curdling my blood.

Blood is one of the easiest things to arrange on a filmset. The Trench is a war movie, about forty-eight hours in the life of very young soldiers waiting to go over the top before the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Despite this we don’t have much call on blood. Annie Buchanan, our make-up supremo, has gallons. Sometimes we just need a dribble but for one scene we need masses. Annie and her assistants come in with a lapping baby bath full of the stuff and buckets of what looks like the sweepings from an abattoir. I want this particular scene to shock, I want to see, literally, blood and guts. As the butcher meat begins to be strewn around I wonder if I have gone too far. Too late. The die is cast.

The cast is very young, eighteen-, nineteen-year-olds, most in their early twenties. We forget how young soldiers are and there is no disguising a genuinely youthful face, that innocent incongruity beneath a tin helmet. I ask one actor what he is doing after the film and he tells me he is going back to school. At rehearsals they are polite but guarded, as if curious to see how I will set about directing.

Directing struck me as a major challenge, despite the fact that I had written eight scripts that were turned into films and had hung around a lot, asking questions and undergoing, I suppose, a kind of education. David Mamet said that all the first-time director has to do is show up and be civil. I think it’s a little more stressful than that. The key thing, it seems to me, is to know exactly what you want (even if it is hugely ambitious). If you know what you want to do, then at least you can answer the several hundred questions that come your way each day. I was massively, preposterously overprepared: working on the theory that in order to catch me out you’d have to get up exceptionally early.

Early rises are a nightmare, especially for the lazy, spoilt, self-indulgent novelist. I used to wake up at 5.30 each morning, go through the day ahead, and record into a dictaphone the events of the day before (this turned out to be the most turgidly boring journal ever). At about 6.15, the car was there and I was ready for some food.