Why it's a director's film, not a screenwriter's

Many screenwriters in LaLaLand turn purple with the opening credit "a film by [director's name]". They believe it is essentially THEIR film, or at least they should get more credit. I used to be on their side of the argument -- before I started making films myself.

The reason it's a director's film is because films are made in the material world, not the imaginative one. Screenwriters "imagine" the perfect film. The perfect film never happens. Problems, unforeseen and missed, happen almost every day of a film shoot, and it is the director who fixes them, or at least addresses them, on the spot.

For example, in THE FAREWELL WAKE I had my share of problems to address. A serious one was due to my own miscasting. I had to cut around an actor whose performance I didn't like, which meant getting the scene to do its charge in a new way, a creative way. I think I succeeded. In a crucial scene between brothers, I thought my own performance in one section sucked so much that I cut it entirely. I recut so Rick, the other actor, could carry the scene more than before (my performance was good in another section). The last scene that we shot had to be re-imagined because the 3rd actor went to the wrong location. Instead of a 3 role scene, it became a 2 role scene. It works fine.

These on-the-spot changes make the final product more a director's work than a screenwriter's work. Of course, this particular film was improvised around my story outline, cutting out the screenwriter's role even more. I think it's a better film than if I had written it!

Screenwriters still whine. My playwright-self shakes my head at this because, in fact, they are whining all the way to the bank. Remember, I've made more money in my life as an essentially unproduced screenwriter than as an award-winning playwright.

Some time back I began to think of THE FAREWELL WAKE as my wake, that is as a kind of swan song for a certain part of my career, a certain area of my brain. I still think this can happen. In fact, I hope it happens. I hope my energy moves to a new focus, writing art song and chamber opera. Notes, music, before words. Maybe after over half a century of scribble, scribble, scribble, I've finally run out of things to say. When words are done, start singing without them.