Letters

“The thing that always makes me laugh is that, whenever, there’s a tough scene or complicated set up, I have various crew saying to me, ‘Man, you had the easy part, you just had to write it.’… The attitude that the writer is “just” someone who writes the script is fostered from the top down in this country.

“We foster the writer/director as the be-all-and-end-all in this country. But is Chris Graham less a director because he hasn’t written his own films? Am I less of a writer because I don’t direct my own scripts?

“I think it’s time for us to look beyond the auteur and look instead at the screenplay – if it’s on the page, it will be on the screen. If it isn’t on the page, then not even a hands-down genius like Peter Jackson could make it work on the screen (note that Peter is a co-writer who surrounds himself with some very talented writers).

“A screenplay does not magically spring from nowhere. A writer spends long hours crafting it and sweating blood to create it. How is that such an easy thing to forget? “Here’s the facts, people – no writer, no script; no script, no finance; no finance, no movie.”

Nick Ward (Stickmen, The Ferryman)
Onfilm magazine May 2006.