Are Screenplays Literature?
Part One
by Charles Deemer (Jun-05-2002)
The publication of screenplays is a fairly recent phenomenon. Although today
recent movies such as In the Bedroom,
You Can Count On Me, The Shipping News, Ghost World and Apocalypse Now Redux all have had their scripts published,
screenplays were rarely published when I was a young writer learning my craft
in the 1960s. In my undergraduate and graduate writing courses, I met novelists
and short story writers,
poets and playwrights, but never a screenwriter.
In
the 1960s, there was no readers' market for screenplays; today there is. The
difference, of course, is that the Great American Novel has been
replaced by the Great American Screenplay as the Great Goal of the aspiring young
writer. Screenplays are getting published because screenwriting students are
buying them, studying the scripts to learn what makes them tick.
In
the 1990s, however, a movement grew in support of another reason for publishing
screenplays: so they might be considered seriously as literature, the way
scripts for stage plays are. We study the plays of
Edward Albee and Arthur Miller in literature classes as a matter of course. The
time has come, this movement argued, to take the screenplays of Horton Foote
and William Goldman just as seriously.
In
1995 a new magazine, Scenario,
embraced this point of view. On its masthead Scenario
was called "the magazine of screenwriting art." In its first
editorial, editor Tod Lippy explained both the reason for and the purpose of
its creation: "Too often, it seems, screenplays are regarded as having an
almost utilitarian function: they serve as the raw material
from which the real players of the cinema -- directors, actors, producers --
make films."
But
certainly the screenplay "as blueprint for a movie" is a reality
that's hard to dispute. Making movies is a collaborative art form. The
screenplay is the first and necessary step in a long process, and
the argument is about where to place its value in a nebulous hierarchy of
values.
"The
mission of Scenario," Lippy
continued, "is to provide a context in which screenplays can be regarded
as valued literary works in themselves, much like stage scripts." As if to
reinforce this mission, the
early issues of Scenario
published an unproduced screenplay among the four scripts per issue (the
practice later was discontinued). One of the
surprising joys of reading the magazine in the beginning was to meet these
wonderful scripts, these wonderful stories, which for one reason or another
never made it through the Hollywood mine field to reach the screen.
Working
screenwriters, of course, have wanted more literary respect at least since the
studio days when they were considered "schmucks with typewriters."
Especially since the importation from France of the "auteur" theory,
which gives primary artistic credit to the director (so that films regularly
have the title "a film by [director]"), screenwriters have felt
like second class citizens. Compared to playwrights, they are. The general public
knows the names of playwrights -- but not of stage play directors! The reverse
is true in film, a person on the street can name a film director but not a
screenwriter (unless they are the same). When I am flown into a strange town to
see the premier of a new stage play of mine, I am treated like an artist. When
I get a screenwriting gig, I am treated like the hired hand that, in fact, I
am.
How
successful is the new movement to bring literary respect to the screenplay as
an art form in its own rate? I will look at this question in my next two
columns, first from the point of view that screenplays are not and should not
be considered literature, and then from the point of view that they should be
so considered and are, in fact, making progress in this direction.
This
question has always existed as a kind of "industry secret," but only
recently, with the growth of the publication of screenplays and the increased
popularity of film as the primary narrative form in our culture, has the
question become of interest to a wider audience. Each side of the issue, it
seems to me, has a strong case to make. We'll begin the debate next month with
the argument that screenplays are not now, have never been, and should not be
considered "literature."
Charles Deemer teaches screenwriting at
Portland State University and is the author of Screenwright: The
Craft of Screenwriting at www.screenwright.com. His recent book Seven Plays is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.