Adventures in the Screen Trade (41 page)

Okay. Let's make some changes-"Da Vinci" can be an action movie. Easy. Bimbaum is a spy, a spy on the run, and the Russian secret police find him and he has to enlist the family to survive. May make an okay picture.

It can be a story of passion: Make Bimbaum Burt Reynolds, the mother Jane Fonda, and let them have an affair seen through the eyes of the kid. Maybe the father finds out. Maybe only the kid knows his old man knows. May not make a bad picture.

It could be a Catcher in the Rye-type piece-a story of adolescent sensitivity and pain. Porky McKee dies, unfairly of some miserable disease, and the kid, Willie, has to deal with the existence of an unjust God. Make Willie older, sign Tim Hutton, watch the teenyboppers cry. May make a good picture.

None of this is meant to be facetious. Bigger changes than any of the above are made in adaptations every year. But for any screenwriter, personally, I feel they are death. All I have, when I start an adaptation (and I don't think this can be repeated too often, which is why I'm going to repeat it too often), is my emotional connection with the source material- If I had been offered James Kirkwood's novel Some Kind of Hero with the proviso that, oh, yes, we're going to keep it just as it is with one teeny-weeny change-we're going to make the main character black so we can nab Richard Pryor- I couldn't have done it. Kirkwood is a fine writer and Pryor is a dazzling talen, but when commercial matters dictate a total subversion of the source material, we are in, as the French say, deep shit. Not the happiest of habitations.

"Da Vinci" says this: There is no place for the artist in the modem world.

even if I hadn't, there are clues. For example, the title. It isn't called "New Guy in Town" or "The Filler of the Second Chair." And the father calls Bimbaum an artist. And everything about Bimbaum indicates that he takes his work with artistic passion.

But he takes too long. Even when his job is on the line, he takes too long. So he's canned. You don't tell Michelangelo, "Hey, I need the ceiling done by Saturday."

Look, none of this "artist" talk is meant to be pretentious. We're dealing with a little story. But it wasn't written about a starving sculptor or the tragedy of Schubert getting canned and dying, his songs unsung. Part of the hoped for charm of the piece was the fact that the character's occupation was the reverse of what you might have expected.

(3) WHAT ABOUT TIME?

There are really two "times" involved herfr-the time of the story (the period) and the time m the story (the duration).

Talcing the period first-I don't think this screenplay should be set in the past. Since it's about the fact that there's no place for the artist in the modem world, it's a cheat if we don't set it in the modern world.

Now, with the duration, we start getting into potential alterations. "Da Vinci" takes place over three haircuts for Willie: the test; the second, where he double-crosses his father; and the last, when Bimbaum gets fired. Do we need three haircuts? Movies are compression.

Can we get by with two? If we do, what do we gain and what do we lose? Think about that.

(4) WHO TELLS THE STORY?

Now things are really getting sticky. Because "Da Vinci" is told in the first person. The kid narrates the story. Perfectly fine for fiction.

Not so good for movies.

Characters talking directly to the camera are, for many reasons, off-putting. Alfie got away with it successfully. Maybe a few others. But very few. Maybe we're one of those few. If we were to open with the marble scene, it might go like this.

FADE IN ON

A SCHOOLYARD, Spring. TWO KIDS are playing Little Pot, a marble game where you lag a great distance toward a small chalked circle with marbles In- side. Whoever lags closest gets to shoot first. How one kid-his name is PORKY McKES- 'lags. As he runs along following his marble toward the chalked circle, the second kid, WILLIE, looks at the camera, starts to talk.

WILLIE

I was playing Little Pot with Porky McKee when Mr. Bimbaum butted into my life.

(he turns away from the cam- era, concentrates on making his lag, when we- )

A BALD MAN, moving across the schoolyard. It's MORRIS, WILLIE's father. MORRIS Go take a haircut-

WILLIE (looks up) Now? This Is for the championship.

MORRIS

(in no mood to mess around] Go.

WILLIE (he sighs, looks at his father)

Okay.

(he turns toward Porky) Back In a little. (now he looks at the camera again)

My father never understood the importance of marbles. (as he starts to run across the schoolyard- )

CUT TO

Cut to whatever you want, I'm not crazy about it. It would work, probably, but there's something as I write even this fragment that's bothersome. Forget the specifics of the dialog or the event. Talking directly to the camera presents problems in a movie. You can do it in the theatre-Our Town, for example - and I can do it here. But in a movie you don't tell people things, you show people things. And writing Da Vinci with a ten-year-old kid talking to us throughout doesn't fill me with a whole lot of enthusiasm, But-

-how's if we got a little stylish? Let's keep the first-person narration, and let's keep Willie as the narrator, but let's make it material recollected in tranquillity. I'll show you what I mean.

FADE IN ON

A SCHOOLYARD IN SPRING. TWO KIDS are deeply Involved In a fierce game of marbles.

CUT TO

A NICE-LOOKING, WELL-DRESSED GUY Of THIRTY. He walks toward the competitors. As he comes closer, we can hear the rat-tat-tat of their talk.. "Qult fudging--' 'I'm not--' '-are, are-' '-shut up, you're just trying to make me miss-' '-you'll miss anyway, now quit fudging-'

THE NICE LOOKING GUY Is right up near them now, but they pay him no attention. He stops, looks at them a moment, then stares around at his surroundings.

NICE-LOOKING GUY (shaking his head, bemused) The battles this schoolyard has seen.

CUT TO

ONE Of THE KIDS-WILLIE-kneeling by the chalked circle, concentrating hard, getting ready to shoot.

NOW THE NICE-LOOKING GUY kneels alongside him, assumes the same position. He tries to make his hand mime the proper form for marble shooting. His fingers are clumsy. NICE-LOOKING GUY I've even forgotten how to hold a shooter*

WILLIE keeps concentrating, as If he hasn't heard the NICE-LOOKING GUY speak. And of course he hasn't heard him-because as we look at them, now we see the resemblance of the two: The guy talking is WILLIE grown up*

NICE-LOOKING GUY It took something of earth-shaking inport to break up our games. (and now he points off-)

CUT TO A. BALD MAN hurrying across the schoolyard.

NICE-LOOKING GUY ( indicating the bald man)

How he was of earth-shaking import.

BALD MAN Go take a haircut.

WILLIE (looking tip) How? This is for the championship.

BALD MAN Go.

WILLIE But Daddy, I 'm winning-- (the bald man points stern- ly back in the direction he came)

CUT TO

THE NICE-LOOKING GUY.As WILLIE sighs, stands, he stands, too, at the same time.

WILLIE Back In a little. Porky. (and as he starts to hurry away-)

CUT TO

OUTSIDE A BARBERSHOP IN A SMALL TOWN. The NICE- LOOKING GUY stands casually on the sidewalk, watching as WILLIE rounds the corner up ahead, runs toward the shop.

NICE-LOOKING GUY My father ran the only barbershop In town. Whenever he hired a help- er, I was the guinea pig, since my father, bald from his twenties, couldn't fulfill the function.

WILLIE has reached the shop now, and as he throws the door open, rushes inside-

CUT TO

THE NICE-LOOKIIIG GUY. He sits in a corner, watch- ing as WILLIE comes to a stop, eyes the new barber.

NICE-LOOKING GUY I was not In the best of moods when I met Mr. Bimbaun, I didn't know It then, but Mr. Bimbaum was never in the best of moods.

And now we would cut to Bimbaum and describe him and tike that. Well?

Those two pages wrote easily enough. (Remember, I haven't written the screenplay yet. And there is a very good reason for that-I'm not sure how. Believe that. What I am doing now is the one thing all writers are masters of: putting off doomsday.) I think it is more stylish than having Wiliie tell the story as a kid. And one of the reasons that a narrator would be a huge help in this material is this: It's not just a first person story, a great deal of what happens is interior. There's not that much dialog to lift.

One of the things that drives you mad, if you are lucky enough to have a novel bought for a movie, is people are constantly asking you which you wrote first, the book or the screenplay? (Curses on Erich Segal.) Marathon Man, for exam- ple. was difficult to turn into a screenplay, because only one scene - Olivier in the diamond district-was a totally exterior scene. You could just lift it almost shot for shot.

Okay, back to the problem of the narrator in Da Vinci. Another way of doing it would be simply to use the technique of voice-over. We would sec the scenes, but the bridging material of intenor stuff would be told us by a voice, maybe Wiliie the kid or just an unnamed person who would serve as storyteller. Or we could get rid of the narrator altogether and have it move from scene to scene like most movies do.

Think again now. If you were going to tell the story as a screenplay, how would you go about it? And why? And what would you gain? And what would you lose?

(5) WHERE DOES THE STORY TAKE PLACE?

Easy. Just where it does. A small American town. Unspecified. I'm from a small Illinois town (or it was small when I was grow- ing up in it), so I guess that's where it takes place.

I mean, why change it? You can. No problem. Set it in the South or in a city or outside of London-but what do you gain?

When you make a locale shift, you are moving away from the author's intention somewhat. And it's imperative, when you do an adaptation, to stay as close as you can to the author's intention. One little shift here, another there, and suddenly you'll find the material fragmenting on you.

Sure you can shift it. But you better have a goddam good reason. Better than just, say, that the producer always wanted co visit New Zealand.

(6) WHAT ABOUT THE CHARACTERS?

Getting toward the crunch now. Lots of thoughts involved Have we enough characters to tell our story? Have we too many-can we cut some or amalgamate? Shall we change them? How? Older? Younger? Make them more appealing? Sweeter? On and on.

Let's get specific. Da Vinci has five people. Here they are and we'll talk about them one at a time.

Willie

Morris-his father Emma-his mother Porky-his friend Mr. Bimbaum

Willie

obviously, since somebody has to get the haircuts, we've got to keep Willie. I think we like him in the story. (At least I know we're supposed to like him.) He's certainly not memorable, like Phoebe in Catcher. But that's probably okay, the story isn't about a memorable kid. What we've got is a marble player, a prepubescent who cares more about sports than girls.

What about girls, though? If we up Willie just a couple of years in age, we can add the brush stroke of adolescent problems. He can want to look better so he can impress someone of the opposite sex. (That would help buttress his actions when he double-crosses his father in the second haircut.) But what about the difficulties of adding a girl character? We don't have to add one. We can just switch Porky's sex.

Sex switching has been done in movies before, most brilliantly in the Gary Grant-Rosalind Russell version of The Front Page, retitled His Girl Friday, where Hildy Johnson went from being a male to a lady without even a change in name.

Porky can be a tomboy who is dealing with the same body changes that Willie is going through. And we can take their relationship through that pain other going from pal to female to see if their world can withstand such a shaking.

Problem: Porky gets a haircut from Bimbaum. A girl wouldn't likely do that.

Possible solution: Do we need Porky's haircut? Can Willie's need alone be a sufficient drive? Especially since he now, for the first time, cares about his looks.

My instinct at this point is not to mess around with any of this - for the same reason, essentially, as I didn't want to switch locales. It reshifts the story, certainly more than a little, and Mr. Bimbaum may end up being this extra thumb. Who cares if he loses a job or not? Whether Willie and Porky survive takes center stage.

Okay- Enough about Willie for now. But this kind of questioning is the kind of thing you must leave your mind open to. Most free - associating ideas end up like toothpaste. Sometimes they don't. Is this one of those sometimes? Make up your own mind.

Morris and Emma

Again, not memorable creations. But the story functions pretty well with them along, the story's not about them, and they provide (again, were meant to provide) a feeling of family warmth against which Bimbaum operates. But do we need them both?

One of them absolutely-someone's got to run the goddam. barbershop,

What if we knock off the mother? Would that make the Willie-Morris relationship closer and, again, buttress Willie's double-cross?

But Emma has some helpful exposition. And the feel of the house, the warmth of the kitchen, is her doing. Yes, we can get rid other, but I don't think the game is worth the candle. I say; keep her.

Getting rid of Morris is also possible. Put it presents credibility problems. I mean, how many lady barbers are there in small towns? Some, sure. But it throws a weight where you don't want it-you've got to think about extraneous things as you go through the screenplay: It's all kind of weird having a lady do- ing that kind of work when her kid's growing up. And as screenwriters, damn near the last thing we want is our audience thinking extraneous things. We want to put blinders, on them-we want them looking where we need them to look- and the minute they begin contemplating matters that are not our concern, we're in terrible trouble.

We are trying to tell our story. There's no time in a screen- play where we can lose them. Because movies keep going, go- ing, going-it's not like a novel where you can go back and. reread a section or a paragraph. We must grab them and make them listen to us. Once their mind begins wondering about matters foreign to our story, we've lost them. And once we've lost them, even for a long blink, the game is gone, we may as well pick up our baseball and head home. So I say keep the parents.