The Rules of Film Noir

Matthew Sweet explores his rules of 1940s and 50s American film noir thrillers:

* Choose a dame with no past and a hero with no future
* Use no fiction but pulp fiction
* See America through a stranger's eyes
* Make it any color as long as it's black
* It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it

First posted: 26 June 2014

Tales from the Script

Book

Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories, by Peter Hanson and Paul Herman.

DVD

Here's a collection of interviews – in book form and on DVD – with a bunch of real screenwriters, including William Goldman, Shane Black, Frank Darabont, Paul Schrader, Nora Ephron, John August, John Carpenter, Paul Mazursky, Ron Shelton, Robert Mark Kamen, Antwone Fisher, David S. Ward, Steven E. de Souza, and others. (If you don't recognise all those names, you haven't been doing your homework as a screenwriter.) 

The book is great, the DVD is better. Partly for the joy of seeing the writers and hearing them speak, but also because of all the Extras on the disc. Worth it for the Advice for New Screenwriters section alone.

Here is a video clip which provides a taste of what's on the DVD.

First posted:10 October 2011

Paul Schrader on 'Taxi Driver'

Taxi Driver came out of me like an animal. I was in this bad space, and I ended up at the hospital with an ulcer, and I'd been living in my car. The metaphor of the taxi—this iron coffin floating through the city, with this person locked inside who seems to be surrounded by people, but in fact is desperately alone—I realized the taxi cab was the metaphor for loneliness. I had a metaphor, I had a character, and then there was just the matter of creating the plot. It's a very simple plot. He desires a woman he cannot have, he doesn't desire a woman he can have, he fails to kill the father figure of the one, he kills the father figure of the other, and becomes a hero by ironic coincidence. That's essentially the story. It's really just a kind of fetid character study.
   Taxi Driver didn't really find a buyer. The script wasn't actually sold in that way. I was reviewing something that Brian De Palma had done. It turned out he was a chess

player, so we were playing chess, and I told him I had written the script. He read it and liked it. In fact, he wanted to do it at that time. He gave it to the producers Michael and Julia Phillips. They wanted to do it. And then Julia and I saw an early version of Mean Streets, and we really felt that Marty Scorsese and Bobby De Niro should do Taxi Driver. Marty wanted to do it, so we made an arrangement with Brian, and then we had the group of us together—Michael and Julia, De Niro and myself, and Scorsese—and, of course, we could not get it made.
   But we all had a blast of good luck. I sold The Yakuza. Michael and Julia won the Oscar for The Sting. Bobby won the Oscar for Godfather II. And Marty had a success with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Suddenly this group of people who couldn't get it financed did get it financed, albeit as a kind of charity job from David Begelman at Columbia. It would not have been financed today. It was a studio system where they would occasionally make a film like this just to keep a diversified slate.

Paul Schrader, as quoted in Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories

The Rules of Film Noir

Matthew Sweet explores his rules of 1940s and 50s American film noir thrillers:

* Choose a dame with no past and a hero with no future
* Use no fiction but pulp fiction
* See America through a stranger's eyes
* Make it any color as long as it's black
* It ain't what you say, it's the way that you say it

Film Noir - PBS American Cinema

PBS takes a look at Film Noir, how it came about, what defines the style, where it went after the 1950s. Enjoy.

Tales from the Script

Book

Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories, by Peter Hanson and Paul Herman.

DVD

Here's a collection of interviews – in book form and on DVD – with a bunch of real screenwriters, including William Goldman, Shane Black, Frank Darabont, Paul Schrader, Nora Ephron, John August, John Carpenter, Paul Mazursky, Ron Shelton, Robert Mark Kamen, Antwone Fisher, David S. Ward, Steven E. de Souza, and others. (If you don't recognise all those names, you haven't been doing your homework as a screenwriter.) 

The book is great, the DVD is better. Partly for the joy of seeing the writers and hearing them speak, but also because of all the Extras on the disc. Worth it for the Advice for New Screenwriters section alone.

Here is a video clip which provides a taste of what's on the DVD.