Read Adventures in the Screen Trade for Free Online Page B

when you come into show business early, there is one simple truth that applies to one and all: The business takes over your life.
    At a time when a nineteen-year-old may be trying to figure out Joyce's symbolism in a course in contemporary fiction, the nineteen-year-old performer is trying to figure out how to get in to see an agent. And so, more than likely, is everyone he knows.
    And when this nineteen-year-old attends a dramatic event, he may actually be thinking about it-but usually what he's think- ing is that great theatrical cliche: "I could have played that part."
    Once you're in the business, it permeates your mind. So when our performer reads a script, what he thinks is "I'd be great here; and I'd kill 'em there; no, I don't want to play that scene the way it's written."
    They are thinking of themselves in the part and how that part may work for them and what may be altered to make it work for them; because of early entry, that's mostly what they know. How to make it work for them.
    Which is not the same as how to make the project work as a whole. (Elizabeth Taylor was famous, at least in legend, for never reading an entire script, just her own lines. No one's had a more fabulous career; maybe she knew something the rest of us didn't.)
    By now we're aware of the power of stars. The way that power most manifests itself is this: not in the material you see on screen (that's something the studio decides) but in the way that material is treated.
    And I can give no better example of how that affects screen- writers than in discussing the movie that follows.
    THE GREAT SANTINI
    Speaking purely as a screenwriter, as someone who must deal with stars, no scene in recent years has rocked me as much as the basketball-playing scene in The Great Santini. I'll try and describe the lead-up to the scene, the sequence itself, and then why it took my head off.
    The movie, written by Lewis John Carlino, from Pat Conroy? novel, starred Robert Duvall, Blythe Banner, and Michael O'Keefe (and the work of those three-father, mother, and son - was world class). Duvall played the lead role, that of i great Marine fighter pilot whose name is Bull Meachum. But it's 1962 and there are no wars to fight. The movie opens in Spain) where we see Meachum in action during air maneuvers, then watch him with his buddies, making a wonderful mess of a fancy restaurant.
    Bull is sent home to a new assignment, and his family meets him at the airport. Danner, O'Keefe-^ high school basketball player - and three smaller children. As they wait for the plane to taxi in. Danner admonishes the kids to wait for their father to
    come to them, because he'll probably hold inspection, but when he alights, his arms go wide and they bolt for him,
    Which is not to say Bull isn't tough. The family drives to a new rented house, and there he harangues them to shape up, calls them hogs: "Listen, hogs--" is his standard family greeting. You sense he cares, but that's from inside the actor and the character, not from the lines.
    Now Bull goes to his new post. We learn several things- chiefly, that he's been passed over for promotion and that his new boss, who has requested him, loathes him. But the superior officer wanted Bull for a reason: The Marine squadron is in rotten shape and he, the superior officer, has no intention of being passed over when his time for promotion comes. So Bull is to bring the squadron up to speed.
    Bull meets the squadron and, in a brilliant speech, scares the crap out of them. He tells them, "I don't want you to consider me as just your commanding officer. I want you to look on me as if I was .. . well . .. God. If I say something, you pretend it was coming from the Burning Bush." He finishes off by saying, "You're flying with Bull Meachum now, and I kid you not, this is the eye of the storm." Then comes the basketball scene.
    It's in the backyard of the rented house, Blythe Danner and the three youngest are sitting happily around, watching Duvall