WRITERS CANNES
David Pearson Festival Director SWF writes in Screen International this week about the changing role of screenwriters and Cannes.
He also spoke to Julian Fellowes and Bill Nicholson about what screenwriters want from Cannes this year and how writers can succeed in a tough market.
As Cannes this week considers what will make audiences show up and pay up at the cinema I asked two of Britain's most successful screenwriters working for Hollywood what they think British screenwriters needed to do? Can screenwriters, often without control of what happens to their work, influence and improve the success of the British industry?
JulianFellowes
As Julian Fellowes, a SWF regular puts it, "Audience will increase if we get it right. It requires an adult attitude. The British industry needs to grow up. We have to make films people want to see. Not bleat about audiences not coming to see films. Boo Hoo misery stories are the luxury of a comfortable age. We need intelligent crowd pleasers. "
Cannes Red Carpet at SWF
Writers, and directors, can sometimes treat their films as some kind of personal therapy that might be good for them, but their films are not of wide enough interest to a paying audience. Filmmakers understandably want to make the films they want, but to be sustainable the industry needs to make more films confident that audiences want to see them.
The contribution screenwriters can make now is bringing their passion to a story, tempered with a self awareness of the audience, whose cinema visit often may be chosen as diversion from their own troubles. As Bill Nicholson says, "the writer must write the story that's buried inside them, and bring it to people. They will recognise it. It's not just the subject but how well we write about it. Something will make them realise it is special to the moment. Screenwriters need to have an authentic response to life, but 999 pitches will not go anywhere. There are a 1000 pitches to make a hit movie."
So what would these seasoned scribes like from Cannes in 2009?
William Nicholson at SWF
Bill Nicholson, says, "We want Cannes to find and champion films that reinforce the feeling that authentic films can be successful. Marketing doesn't always get it right. Some good films get missed. Films like Slumdog Millionaire and Brokeback Mountain make you feel that you can do something without stars that can do well and be admired. "
Julian Fellowes addes, " I hope Cannes this year understands the power they have in taking the industry forward into a profitable period with good relations between the filmmakers and the audience. Great filmmakers can outgrow their time, critics may still like them but their time has gone. Others need to come up."
I'd like a demonstration that original screenplays can be as successful as adapted work. Many big novel transitions to the screen are not hits but the inexorable rise of films based on books and comics can only be slowed by producers championing strong scripts that good writers have written.
Julian Fellowes solution is that, "Writers should try and work for intelligent producers- like mine for Young Victoria. They allowed us to make a film about an unfashionable subject. How many producers would back something about a chamber crisis in 1838? "