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Robin Swicord dreams of a book that talks Scriptwriting from soup to nuts Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s edited by Patrick McGilligan U of California P, 428pp, $24.95, ISBN 0 520 20427 1
I went to a terrific dinner party recently. Patrick McGilligan had a few people over for one of those private Angeleno evenings one always hears about later with a stab of envy. I couldn't imagine why I had been included. McGilligan is the author of acclaimed biographies of directors Robert Altman, George Cukor and Fritz Lang, but that night he was entertaining only prominent screenwriters from the 60s, and his reverence and affection for them was obvious.
It was raining and I had hit some traffic on the 405 freeway, so the party was already well underway by the time I arrived. Stirling Silliphant (in the Heat of the Night) was there, wineglass in hand, chatting up Walter Bernstein (Fail-Safe, The Front, Semi-Tough) and Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank Jr (The Long hot Summer, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Hud, Norma Rae). Just glancing around, I could count six Best Screenplay Oscars, no fewer than 15 Best Screenplay nominations, four Writers Guild Life Achievement Awards, and more than 20 Writers Guild Award nominations for feature screenwriting. "I love movies," Bernstein was telling our host, "I love movies. I still get that frisson when I go on a movie set. I wrote a couple of stories for The New Yorker, but what I really wanted to do was go to Hollywood." "Well, who wouldn't?" Frank agreed. "There are a lot of movies that for me carry the weight of a novel. I've had experiences watching movies that I feel are as artful."
At once I felt myself in good company. One of the unfortunate myths about screenwriters (perpetuated by John Gregory Dunne's recent book Monster) is that we're prostituting our magnificent talents when we write movies. But here I was in a room with some of this century's most accomplished film-makers, and it was clear that unlike the disappointed playwrights and novelists who had preceded them to Hollywood, these writers clearly respected filmwriting and were passionate about movies.
There was a burst of hilarity from a cluster...