The Screen Writer

This short subject, touting screen writers, starts with a quote from HAMLET, so I might as well start this review with another. I'm a great believer in the written word, and while a picture may be worth a thousand of them, when you're doing a movie, you've got to start with words.

This short is one of several productions by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences offering some thoughts on each other several specialists who make a movie. It's rare when an actor comes up with his own lines on the spot; it's rare enough that's there's a term for it, "ad libbing". Almost invariably, it starts with some writer being anti-social at a typewriter, or nowadays, a computer.

It has lots of clips from well-known movies.

Screen Writer, The (1950)

** (out of 4)

Another entry in a series of shorts produced by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The main goal of this short is to explain certain jobs in Hollywood and, as the title says, this one here looks at the screenwriter. We learn how they come up with ideas and what all their job requires while on set. We also learn that more and more screenwriters are directing their pictures with Billy Wilder and John Huston mentioned. As with the other films in the series, this here is good for young people who might not know what certain jobs actually do but if you're got the mildest knowledge then you're going to know everything here. The final minutes of the shorts is pretty much just a promo reel showing clips from various movies.

Ten-minutes is hardly enough time to do anything in depth. Thus the short simply highlights the screenwriter's creative role in the process by which his (no 'her') original idea or adaptation reaches the screen. The various hands through which the first draft passes is outlined in rather mechanical fashion. Nonetheless, for folks wishing to inform themselves, the outline can be very informative. Interestingly, specific individuals, mainly directors of top movies, are referred to but never by name. (Instead, actors appear as stand-ins.) That way, it's the various levels of approval and not personalities that remain uppermost. Of course, each level can have a hand in shaping the final product. Thus the draft that finally reaches the screen is usually a collective rather than an individual product, while many scripts are the result of several writers, hopefully in collaboration. It should also be noted that the short was made in 1950 when movie studios still monopolized film production. Since then, the nature of the industry has changed drastically. Consequently, an update to reflect these changes would be doubly informative.