To me, the most important issue is continuity. Directors like Soderbergh or Martin Scorsese or Robert Altman have teamed up with certain screenwriters on occasion—Scorsese and Schrader for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and The Last Temptation Of Christ; Altman and Joan Tewkesbury for Thieves Like Us and Nashville—but they've all worked with many different writers throughout their careers while maintaining singularity as filmmakers. Even if it weren't immediately clear who's behind the camera, as it certainly is with Scorsese and Altman, you can find thematic concerns and stylistic signatures that run through everything they've done. Their work is connected in ways that the vast, vast majority of screenwriters are not.
In fact, I can count on one finger the number of contemporary screenwriters whose voices frequently supercede those of the director: Charlie Kaufman. Only in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind has the director's imagination been nearly as forceful as the writer's, and even then, the ingenuity of Kaufman's conceit shines through brightest. And yet there's a case of a writer who gets credit from every single critic who talks about his work, because to ignore it would be completely irrational. Kaufman is finally preparing to direct one of his own screenplays, which should be an interesting test. Will he be able to wrangle the troops behind a cohesive vision, or will he be one of those screenwriters who try their hand at directing and display zero visual imagination?
All that said, I want to go on record as saying I'm not an auteurist. While I'm obviously inclined to assert the director's primacy, I'm not one of those critics who glom onto a certain filmmaker with a certain set of thematic or stylistic markers, and proceeds to rubber-stamp everything they do. I'm also not inclined to dismiss craftsmen like John Huston or William Wyler or Michael Winterbottom or Stephen Frears, who don't have a signature, but bring a degree of intelligence, versatility, and good taste to most of what they do. Frears' new film The Queen, for example, yields the floor to a terrific screenplay by Peter Morgan, and allows two fine lead actors the space to execute it. Credit needs to be given when it's due, but I'm finding cases like these to be more the exception than the rule.
KP: "How a script is executed is so much more crucial than the quality of the script itself": You confound me with your logic, Scott. You're right: I'd rather see a bad script well-executed than a great script botched. I'm glad, for instance, that the trend of dull Shakespeare adaptations has played itself out. But have you brought me around to agreeing with you, or have we simply decided that the medium has come to devalue script-y virtues like sharp dialogue in favor of director-ly virtues like visual style? Maybe it's no coincidence that creators who begin as writers heavily invested in conveying a total vision end up directing, whether they're dependent on visual style (like Quentin Tarantino) or remain rooted in dialogue (like Whit Stillman and Kevin Smith). Or they go into television, like Joss Whedon. It's as much about security as egomania.
Still, I don't think the greatest director can make a great film from a terrible script, or even a mediocre one, and I challenge you to find one example. Just one.
ST: How about Million Dollar Baby? There's a Paul Haggis screenplay packed to the gills with stock characters and hoary boxing-movie clichés, yet completely elevated by Clint Eastwood's gentle understatement and his wonderfully expressive chiaroscuro lighting scheme. Or to keep with the boxing theme, how about Undisputed, which is the crudest B-movie material imaginable—dudes in jail fighting other dudes—but was raised to an iconic battle of the titans by Walter Hill? Perhaps it's a shame that script-y virtues (dialogue, et. al.) have been replaced by director-ly virtues (style, et. al.), but I think that's the world we're living in now. And as you say, writers with really strong voices have generally gotten around to directing their own material, whether they know what to do with the camera, or their name is Kevin Smith.
Let me address my apparent lapse in logic: "How a script is executed is so much more crucial than the quality of the script itself." I guess what I mean is simpler: Execution is all. It seems odd to assert that the writer—who provides the story, the characters, the dialogue, and all these essential elements—should be devalued at all. But could anyone make the case of the screenwriter's primacy without me giggling? No. As I said before, Charlie Kaufman is the only contemporary American screenwriter who doesn't direct (yet) whose voice is stronger than the directors who have take on his work. There are a handful of other writers who can generally be relied on for intelligent work, but Kaufman's is the only name that gets me anticipating a film for the screenwriter's credit instead of the director's. Can you really think of any more? (That's a rhetorical question, by the way.)
KP: Another screenwriter who doesn't direct whose name alone is reason to get excited about a project… Is Ben Hecht still working?
I think I'd go see anything with James Schamus' name on it, although his scripts are inextricable from Ang Lee's direction. To return to Clint Eastwood, I think Unforgiven benefits from a screenplay by David Webb Peoples that's just about perfect, but it's not like everything with his name on turns out great. (And, now that I look him up, looks like he did direct a movie.) So, um, well…
Okay, so what have we concluded? That it sucks to be a screenwriter even if screenwriters don't suck? That if you really have a voice and vision, you'd better pick up a camera? That screenwriters may be underappreciated, but they're ultimately craftsmen? I turn to you to sum this up.
ST: Good call on David Webb Peoples and James Schamus, who have written some really intelligent screenplays without getting a chance to direct. Talk about screenwriters getting screwed: In Peoples' case, I can't imagine that Soldier came out the way he'd hoped—you're an unlucky man when your material gets turned over to the director of Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon—but I'm betting a Walter Hill or John Carpenter type could have done wonders with Kurt Russell in a lead role where he's given fewer than 100 words of dialogue.
And yes, if you've concluded that it sucks to be a screenwriter even if screenwriters don't suck, that you need to pick up a camera if you have a voice, and that writers are ultimately craftsmen whose work is given over to someone else's vision, then I guess you're agreeing with me, right? What do I win?
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