Screenwriting With a Conscience

Ethics for Screenwriters

Marilyn Beker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781135637927
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film & Video

Screenwriting With a Conscience: Ethics for Screenwriters is for screenwriters who care deeply about what they write; who are aware that movie images matter and can influence audiences; and who want to create meaningful screenplays that make powerful statements while entertaining and winning over audiences. A user-friendly guide to ethical screenwriting, this book makes the case that social responsibility is endemic to public art while it emphatically champions First Amendment rights and condemns censorship.

In this dynamic and practical volume, author Marilyn Beker provides methods for self-assessment of values, ideas, and ethical stances, and demonstrates the application of these values to the development of plot, character, and dialogue. Screenwriters are introduced to ethical decision making models and shown--through specific film examples--how they can be utilized in plot and character development. In addition, specific techniques and exercises are supplied to help screenwriters determine the difference between "good" and "evil," to write realistic and compelling characters based on this determination, and to present "messages" and write dialogue powerfully without preaching. This book also puts forth a livable work philosophy for dealing with the ethics of the screenwriting business, and presents a viable personal philosophy for surviving in the screenwriting world.

Screenwriting With a Conscience: Ethics for Screenwriters is an indispensible, dynamic guide for the ethics-conscious screenwriter. It is intended for screenwriters at the student and professional level, and is appropriate for beginning to graduate screenwriting courses in film and English programs, and for film courses dealing with Ethics in the Media.

PART I
WHY??

ETHICS? FOR SCREENWRITERS????

n an industry more cutthroat than a tracheotomy, can a standard of ethical behavior be defined and met? Of course not! Screenwriters are not (as your parents persist in warning you) doctors or lawyers. However, there is a way of working that will make you feel good about yourself and let you sleep, day or night; a way of conducting yourself and your work by standards that command respect because they are founded on motives that are humanistic and integritybased.

Being an ethical screenwriter isn’t easy, but consider the alternative. Every day kind and wonderful people who want to behave ethically find themselves turning into ruthless wackos playing craps with their souls in the neon lottery that is the movie business. The thing that drives these people, whether they like to admit it or not, is the idea that when they get their movie made, it will mesmerize millions and make them famous and filthy rich.

You’re probably saying you’re not like that—the only thing you’re interested in is getting your personal artistic vision across. You may demonstrate that you despise even the idea of big bucks and good tables at restaurants by dressing like a derelict and swearing allegiance to Chef Boyardee. Fine. But just how much you want to see your movie get made may warp your priorities enough so that in the end you’ll do just about anything to get what you want—eat anchovies, wear a name tag, blow off your “artistic vision” to become just another shallow money grubber hurling your soul at the devil.

And just what is “artistic vision” anyway? Most screenwriters can’t put theirs into words. They usually just mumble something about being able to say exactly what they want to when they want to. The sad truth is that most screenwriters have no idea why they are writing or what they want to say when they do.

I’ve been writing professionally for over 30 years and I’ve met only a small a capella choir of screenwriters who have thought deeply about life and about what comments their movies will make about it. The rest are just shrugging their shoulders and hoping that “entertainment” doesn’t have to be too deep.

The thing is that what we call “entertainment” is one of the deepest things around because, usually, even without us realizing it, entertainment stirs our emotions, piques our intellectual interest, and otherwise provides the stimulus that makes us think. “Entertainment” can actually transform us and change our lives.

Just think for a moment about the films that made a difference in your life. I’ll bet that every one of them struck a chord in you that moved you in some way to react in the world, to come to certain conclusions about life, to at least think about how you were living.

Exercise

Take a few moments to list the films that made a difference in your life. Beside each film title write down (in one or two lines) the story of the film and then, in another line, write down what you think the film is really about—what message it delivers for you. Go deep—beyond the superficial messages—(e.g., good-looking guys get more sex) to deeper issues (e.g., Society rewards appearance while it overlooks soul-worth). Here are a couple of my old favorites.

The Wizard of Oz

ABOUT:

A girl from Kansas is caught up in a tornado and carried to a magical land where she must outwit a wicked witch and find the wizard who can help her get back home again.

MESSAGE:

There’s no place like home—no matter how fabulous and exciting other places may be.

Casablanca

ABOUT:

A rakish ex-pat saloon owner in WWII Casablanca meets up with the woman who broke his heart in Paris and discovers she is the wife of a revered Nazi fighter whose life he has the chance to save.

MESSAGE:

War and love inspire people to act with selfless courage.

You get the idea.

An Extra Exercise

Here’s a list of twelve Oscar-winning screenplays written directly for the screen. Try the About/Really About exercise on these. If you want more winners find them on the Oscar web site: http://www.oscars.org/. If you haven’t seen the films, see them!

2001 Gosford Park—Julian Fellowes

2000 Almost Famous—Cameron Crowe

1999 American Beauty—Alan Ball

1998 Shakespeare in Love—Marc Norman, Tom Stoppard

1997 Good Will Hunting—Ben Affleck, Matt Damon

1996 Fargo—Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

1995 The Usual Suspects—Christopher McQuarrie

1994 Pulp Fiction—Roger Avary, Quentin Tarantino

1993 The Piano—Jane Campion

1992 The Crying Game—Neil Jordan

1991 Thelma and Louise—Callie Khouri

1990 Ghost—Bruce Joel Rubin

MESSAGE AND MEANING

ou’ll notice that usually, what the film means to you is quite different from “what it is about.” Writers, producers, directors, and screenwriting teachers will ask you what your film is about, and, usually, they just want you to tell them your story. But as writers, we all must ultimately face the truth that the story is only a chiffon scarf over the rippling bosom of its message.

Of course, old films are easier to decipher. Often they articulate their messages boldly in the body of the film. In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy declares “There’s no place like home!” at the end of the film, and in Casablanca, Rick delivers his famous “hill of beans” speech on the foggy, soggy runway. But these days our film messages are more and more subtle because modern audiences don’t like to be told what to think in obvious and often cheesy ways. We’ve got to sneak our messages into our movies if we want to deliver them, and sometimes we do such a good job of sneaking that we hide what the film is Really About even from ourselves.

You may be surprised at how difficult it was to articulate why certain films meant something to you. That’s because it takes some deep soul searching to discover what’s really important to you in life. Maybe now’s the time you should consider what you want to say in the film you currently want to write. You may even begin to ask yourself why you want to write films at all. We’ll get to that later.

But for now, the initial step is to realize that all movies say something even if the person who wrote them (and/or made them) is conscious of that or not. And all movies make a strong statement, even if that statement is silly, inconsequential, or just plain dumb (party till you throw up for no good reason; boff your brains out for no good reason; shoot, kill, maim for no good reason.) I’m sure you can find lots of movies to fit those examples.

So isn’t superficiality enough? Didn’t Marshal McLuhan, years ago, say that the way you say something is really what you are saying—that you can’t separate the message from the medium (the medium IS the message)? Well, yes, but it’s not that simple. I first met McLuhan at the University of Toronto where he was a stodgy professor and I was a poetry-crazed freshwoman. He used to appear around campus wearing scruffy tweed jackets and sensible sturdy shoes. He didn’t look as hip as his ideas—an unlikely medium for his own particular message.

In the summer of my sophomore year, while working as a cub reporter for The Toronto Star, I interviewed him about his ideas. McLuhan reluctantly agreed to meet me in a phone booth at an old Woolworth’s store. And although the location was intriguing, his conversation wasn’t.

I couldn’t understand a word he said. He spoke in monosyllables and cryptic weird phrases that really meant nothing and I finally dissolved in a puddle of giggles, assuming that he was giving me an example of “blip culture”—something we now call “sound bites”—a taste of some kind of meaningless future shorthand speak. I took away from that meeting the idea that maybe McLuhan was telling me the future of communication lay in the replication of electronic blips whose sole function was to fascinate by sound nuance; that if we continued at our present rate, conversation (live or electronic) would become only aural stimulation whose purpose was to titillate rather than inform.

And by rendering the example of that kind of communication, McLuhan himself was showing up the absurdity of pop culture’s direction—style over substance—and making the point that communication can mesmerize and titillate but that it should also have meaning beyond glitzy technological displays.

I left our meeting delighted by his approach, captivated by his “performance,” and dedicated to the ideal that meaning was important in conversation, in media, and in art. Even though I’m a big fan of bizarre image placement, ultramodern techno-installations, and image manipulatlon (wonderfully done in Natural Born Killers, a real example of style over substance), I still believe that communication should have meaning and I am convinced that McLuhan did, too.

Right now you might be getting a little nervous—afraid that I’m going to spend many chapters trying to prove to you that art and particularly movies make a difference to society, have a power over it, and sometimes inform and shape it. Relax. I’m not. There are other books out there that do that. I’m also not going to try to convince you that images are important and compelling. There are lots of other books that do that. I’m going to assume that you’ve read all those books or have chosen to ignore them because, like me, you already believe that film is magical, powerful, and can change and/or influence lives; that film has meaning and can inspire people and motivate them to action.

It’s because I believe that images are powerful, meaningful and mighty things, that I also believe that the people who create them on such a large scale (a 35-foot idea is hard to ignore) have a responsibility as part of the human family to wield their power wisely. I probably got that belief early on when I began as a cub reporter.

In those days, we weren’t allowed to show pictures of dead people in the newspaper. It was obvious to us that pictures in print were compelling and could in fact be insightful. Television was even more sacrosanct. I still remember watching in horror the now-famous televised execution of the Vietnamese man in the madras shirt—a direct shot to the head—in black and white on the 6 o’clock news. The broadcast of that image changed journalism forever and it changed popular culture because from that point on, it somehow became acceptable to show graphic violence on the news to audiences because they were somehow removed from it by virtue of the technology.

And yet, the people working in news—the reporters, the cameramen (then it was mostly camera men, particularly in Vietnam) working with the newest and most portable equipment in history (video cameras and videotape instead of cumbersome film equipment and film)—could somehow be involved in the event but not of it. That very Yogic concept of being in the world but not of it seemed to indicate that it was now all right to enter into more intriguing realms of image projection heretofore considered too rough for ordinary folk.

The cameraperson’s responsibility in news is to record the events, not influence them or stop them. Based on that, plenty of artists have held up humanity’s horror to the public gaze indicating that they were simply “reporting” on life and had no responsibility to influence or alter it. And yet journalistic responsibility is very important to audiences. Journalists are held to high standards of truth and accountabllity. Reporters are supposed to be objective, although reportage can never be truly objective—the reporter’s very presence in the event alters that event.

The reporter maintains that he or she deals in truth. Artists maintain that they deal in truth too—a nonobjective and personal truth—but the artist certainly believes that the artistic impression is just as important as the reporter’s impression, sometimes even more important. In that way, artists—writers, painters, actors—particularly those who work in the popular culture—are the examiners, interpreters, shapers, or guardians of that culture just as much as journalists are.

Screenwriters certainly belong in the category of popular artists who examine, interpret, and even shape culture, so screenwriters should own up to that responsibility in some of the ways society ex-pects journalists to do, by admitting their work has meaning and power; by accepting that this work has an effect on society; by admitting that the messages at the core of that work come directly from the person who generated it.

Screenwriters need to be message-conscious as well as eloquent, just as reporters should be. Screenwriters need to be honest with themselves and with audiences and, by virtue of their ability to make thoughts visual and “real,” screenwriters should take responsibility for what they say and dedicate themselves to putting forth material that will not harm humanity.

WHAT ABOUT THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

Should every screenwriter put forth only pleasing lollipop images? Of course not. Often it is necessary to portray ugliness to express beauty. Shouldn’t writers have the right to say anything they want to even if it hurts humanity? Unfortunately, because I am a staunch supporter of the First Amendment, I believe that they should have that right. But I also believe that people should think before speaking and certainly before writing to make sure what they are saying is really what they believe. Often that isn’t the case. Usually people don’t really know what they believe and don’t realize what the movies they are writing are really saying.

Also, people interested in protecting the First Amendment are always talking about choice. I agree it’s important that people be given the choice to see something or not to see it. But, that choice must be informed. I also believe that artists, when they work, should make informed choices, too—about the possible effects of their work and about their audiences—and often they don’t.

Screenwriters may say they want freedom of expression but do they really exercise it when they get the chance? Just what do we all mean by artistic freedom? Certainly, as writers, we need to think that we are free to write whatever we want to write—especially if we live in free countries where expression is valued, cherished, protected. And yet, in the final analysis, how much of what we say is influenced by what our friends will say, what our parents will say, what our peers will say about our work? How many of us are influenced by our own insecurities and embarrassments? How many of us are influenced by economy, by the demands of the market place?

There are lots of examples to draw from. Writers have told me that they won’t write graphic sex scenes because they are embarrassed that their parents will see their stuff. I’ve seen writers make their scripts politically correct for fear of condemnation from the public. And I’ve known many writers who have changed the most vital points of their screen plays, moved off their own “sacred” convictions, to please studio executives and producers.

Maybe our attachment to artistic freedom is only something we tell ourselves so we can feel better. Maybe, if, as radical political philosopher Herbert Marcuse said “art is the escape valve of society,” it is also the escape valve of artists who want to believe that they live in a world apart from other beings, apart from lesser mortals who must pay particular social dues.

The truth is that artists always exercise control over their work and often the inclination to go against the social grain becomes just as narrow a constraint as adhering to it.

Perhaps it’s time for artists (and particularly screenwriters) to acknowledge self-control and exercise it.

If they do, they may deflect the elements in our culture—religious, social, or governmental (stronger now then they have been in the last few decades)—from forcing the implementation of controls. And controls ( a loose term for censorship) and government “influence” in art can be odious, counterproductive, and even dangerous.

As a case study, let’s take a consulting project I took on for the Northern Service of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. In 1977, I was sent to the Canadian Arctic to report on the effects of television in Arctic communities and to make suggestions for new approaches to media pro gramming. Years before the Canadian government had set up television transmitters north of the 60^th parallel and was piping in a potpourri of television shows to the native population. There were Canadian documentaries and educational programs but there were also American prime time reruns of Hawaii F...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Why??
• Part II The Certainty of what: Anything Goes?
• Part III What Really Matters
• Part IV White Hats, Black Hats
• PART V Killing the Messenger
• Part VI Having Written and Writing More
• Conclusion
• References