The Ability to Kill (25 page)

Let us look at the producer’s point of view. The reasons that he is employing the novelist are fairly complex.

For the business-like folk who control the industry any argument about the merits of a picture can be settled immediately by reference to its takings at the box office. It is idle to complain about this. Film-making is a big business. It must be. For a capital risk of two thousand pounds it is still possible to publish a novel. Five thousand pounds will still finance the production of a play. But even a modest feature involves the investment of hundreds of thousands of pounds.

The position of the producer, then, is a difficult one. The manufacturing process involved in the making of a film is so costly that he cannot take a small risk; he cannot, so to speak, print a thousand copies of something that he feels is promising. He can make a small
ish
picture, but not a very small one; and even with a smallish one he will have to be careful, for the cinema owners are likely to tell him that the public do not want to see smallish pictures, only very big ones, and that they cannot give him any screen time. On the other hand—for, contrary to the general belief, many producers are cultivated and humane men—he knows that the film-going public is not on the whole nearly as stupid as film exhibitors like to insist, and that if he can make a better, more intelligent film than the average, it may be very successful indeed at the box office. And it may not, of course. A film can be acclaimed by the critics and still do no business. A limited, little-theatre, ‘prestige’ release can be financially disastrous.

The producer, then, is driven to working within a small area of compromise. He can be unusual but not very unusual, intelligent but not very intelligent, honourable but not completely honest. If he chooses an unusual subject he will take care to appease the money people by getting big name stars to play in it, whether they are suitable or not. If his subject requires that sexual relations between human beings be treated at all explicitly, he will accept in advance the film’s emasculation by the censors. If he decides to be forthright and controversial, his decision will be flavoured by the knowledge that cinema-goers of every race, religion, and sect (outside the Communist countries, of course) must approve of it, too. Before he begins to share in any profits that may be forthcoming, the picture has to earn very much more than its original negative cost—double as a rule. The domestic market alone is not enough. It is not a simple question of greed either. His
status in the industry—and that means the extent of his freedom to do the films he wants—depends not on the aesthetic qualities of his productions, but on how much they gross.

He would not be human if the sum of these pressures did not make him look for some sort of insurance.

There are, of course, several recognised policies available. He can make low-budget horror pictures about mad scientists, with special effects from Mars. He can make pseudo-Biblical pictures. He can even settle for a commercial television series. Usually, however, he adopts a less desperate, though more difficult, course. He competes with other producers for the stars believed to have drawing power at the box office. To get them he needs two things: stories and scripts.

For his story material he looks first to the best-seller lists and the theatrical successes. The reason is that such material, however unsuitable it may be for adaptation to the screen, is ‘pre-sold’ to the public. That fact will help him not only when it comes to selling the picture, but in engaging the interest of important stars. In the United States this pre-selling is so important that, in the case of a book, it is not uncommon for a producer to subsidise the publisher with special advertising appropriations to maintain sales and keep the book on the best-seller lists.

However, the supply of both best-sellers and theatrical successes is limited, and the motion picture rights to them are costly. Without major studio or other substantial backing, an independent producer is forced to look elsewhere. ‘Elsewhere’ means, of course, among the less successful books and plays. It is not quite as depressing a task as it may sound. In spite of the relentless year-in-year-out coverage of published work by studio story departments a lot of potential film material remains unsold. Story fashions change, a writer’s later success
may stimulate interest in earlier work, censorship requirements may be modified so that a story becomes permissible film material. And while it may not be pre-sold, there is a compensation: because it has been on the market so long, it can be bought for a small fraction of the price of a best-seller.

As I want to present both sides of the curious relationship between writer and producer as faithfully as possible I have invented a case history. The characters in it are a writer, a novel, a producer and a film adapted from the novel.

The writer’s name is Jerome Anders and I have made him a novelist rather than a playwright because I know more about novelists. He is in his late twenties, married with two children, and works in a bookshop in Kensington. His father was a mining engineer and he spent two years of his early childhood in Bolivia. He began with short stories and sold three of them.
Henceforth to Seek
was his first novel. It had some very good reviews and sold three thousand copies in hard covers. None of the cheap edition publishers took it. His second book was not published. He is working on a third. He would like to write for his living.

Now for the book. Here is part of the blurb which the publisher’s editor wrote for the wrapper of
Henceforth to Seek
: ‘This exciting first novel is a lyrical love story based on an old legend of the Bolivian Indians dealing with the age-long quest for the ideal woman. Born in London, Anders spent most of his childhood in Bolivia. The title comes from a poem he wrote when he was eighteen:

I will not weary you with the plot.

The producer is in his early fifties. He was originally an actor, became a stage producer and then directed a number of inexpensive films based on successful stage comedies. Later, he produced two very popular war pictures about the R.A.F. One of them was awarded an Oscar for black-and-white photography. He is a Cambridge man.

In recent years his films have been less successful; no real disasters, but no hits either. He is in a mood to experiment with fresh ideas and new people.

As he himself puts it to an interviewing newspaper columnist. ‘Nowadays, it seems to me, most producers approach a property they’ve bought as if it were an enemy that has somehow to be defeated. I say “why buy it if you don’t want to use it?” I believe in
Henceforth to Seek
and I’m going to make it the way it is, as frankly and honestly as I know how. Of course, we’re going to run into censorship trouble. Very well, I say, let’s run into it. If this picture fails in integrity it fails, full stop. That’s one of the reasons I’ve asked the author to write the screenplay.’

It is
one
of the reasons. There are others.

Good screenwriters are expensive. They are also inclined to prefer their own ideas to this particular producer’s. He likes writers to be inexpensive and amenable; and if this also means that they are inexperienced, then he is quite ready to repair the deficiency out of his own store of expertise. Or as he prefers to put it: ‘As I see it the whole function of the producer is to create enthusiasm and identity of intention within the small creative group which really makes the picture, to give that group a dynamic of its own.’

This is what Anders tells his wife about the producer after their first conference:

‘He’s not at all what I’d imagined. Looks a bit like a don. Tweeds, bow tie, quiet, relaxed, well-read, articulate. And
he’s genuinely fond of
Henceforth.
I told him I thought he was insane to try to make a film of it. He said he thought he was insane, too, and why didn’t we start Monday? I liked him.’

Three weeks go by. Anders says to his wife:

‘Do you know that you can alter the whole emotional content of a scene simply by editing it differently in the cutting room? No, darling, nobody’s trying to alter anything. It’ll be months before they even start shooting the picture. But the technical side of it’s pretty important. I’m glad I’ve got him on my side. He has an extraordinary grasp of story construction. Makes me feel like an amateur. I’m beginning to realise how little I know about writing for the screen. You know that passage in the book where the young girl about to marry thinks of the lover she has killed? It took me three pages to describe what she was thinking. He wants to do it in one shot of her looking down at a cup of water and then slowly letting the water dribble away into the sand. I wish I’d thought of that. Do you know, I think this might turn out to be a rather better film than it was a novel. Anyway, I’m enjoying myself.’

Three months later the producer says to his wife:

‘It’s a pity, and I understand how Anders feels; but if we’re going to have Cary playing the lover we do have to think again about the story. It’s not that I particularly mind his being killed off before the end of the picture—I hope I can rise above that sort of consideration, whatever pressure his agent brings to bear—it’s the censorship question. Cary’s name should sell the picture, but with the deal he has, and in colour, it’s going to cost nearer three times the original budget. I think we have to face the censorship question now. You know I liked the story as it was, but one has to be practical. Besides, I’ve been wondering anyway, if family audiences are going to like the girl killing one man and then marrying another. I think they’ll think it’s in bad taste.’

By now the love affair is over. A hack writer has been brought in to do what the producer calls a quick polish on the screenplay.

This is what the hack says:

‘Not a playable scene or a speakable line in the entire script. Otherwise it’s fine. They start shooting next week. I’d better get to work.’

At the showing of the finished picture, the producer talks to the distributors. They are reasonably happy, but he has something on his mind. Anders is making trouble. For one thing he is demanding that his name be removed from the credit titles. Worse, he got a little tight at a cocktail party and told a disagreeable, but true, and rather funny, story about the producer. A newspaper gossip columnist was there and the story was published. The producer thinks it wise to demonstrate his magnanimity.

‘Anders didn’t do a bad job on the whole,’ he explains; ‘but the thing needed reconstructing and a thorough tightening. There were too many characters and not enough action. I got impatient with the girl. The man behaved like an idiot. You see, the trouble with a story of this kind is that it’s so easy to be deceived by the writing in the original. Now I could look past all that to the essential story, which was about a man and two girls, with one or two variations and an unusual setting. One of the variations was the killing of the lover, and quite obviously it had to come out in the end. Another thing; the real story didn’t begin in the book until chapter eight. With all the dead wood cleared away from the remainder, I was left with very little to work on. I had to invent fresh incident. I’m afraid Anders was a little childish about it. Naturally, he resented things like the introduction of the Cockney sea captain with the lisp; but I felt it needed more comedy. And I was right. A showman has an instinct about these things.’

Three months later the film is out.

‘I hear,’ says Anders, ‘that
Henceforth to Seek
is now called
Beyond the Hills.
You’d think he’d have had the primitive courtesy to send me seats for the premiere, wouldn’t you? After all, I wrote it.’

A week after the premiere there is an inquest.

‘Of course the snob critics didn’t like it,’ the producer says defensively; ‘but apart from London and Manchester it’s doing wonderful business. It’s a family picture and that’s what this industry needs now … good family pictures.’

What about Mr Anders’ future?

The money from
Henceforth to Seek
has enabled him to give up his job in the bookshop. He has also leased a cottage in the country and is working there on his new book. Unfortunately, it does not seem to be going very well. The reason, he thinks, is because the country, or that part of it, does not agree with him. Later, when he has moved back to town, he will think of other reasons.

In fact, something has happened to him as a writer during the past few months, and he does not yet know it.

Every writer has a critic inside him and the nature of that critic is very important to his work. It may be benevolent, too benevolent, but it may also be a martinet. If the demands of the internal critic exceed the capacity of the host to pay, or if payment is demanded in an unfamiliar currency, there may be a bankruptcy.

I suggested earlier that, at its best, film-making must be regarded as an art. I make that suggestion again. It is an art. It has therefore a complex discipline. When, then, a comparatively inexperienced writer has a flirtation with it, what he is apt to carry away is not the tender memory of a sweet girl wooed and won, but the faint, patronising smile of a compliant but unsatisfied goddess.

Mr Anders, then, is suffering from a sense of defeat, and the goddess is at his elbow as he works on his new book.

‘Do you really think that anyone can play that scene?’ she asks.

‘I don’t care whether anyone can play it or not,’ he snaps. ‘It’s meant to be read.’

‘Oops, sorry,’ says the goddess; but his working day has been spoiled.

‘There are an awful lot of words there,’ remarks the goddess a few days later. ‘Do you remember that story the producer told you about what you could do with a succession of visual images? It wasn’t his own story, of course. It came out of a novel by Scott Fitzgerald. And what was that other anecdote about visual story-telling, the one Schulberg quoted in
What Makes Sammy Run?
Schulberg, now. He’s a novelist and a good screenwriter, too.’