matt lee says, "writing is never film"

>From a creative perspective is this statement true? Yes. It's absolutely
true. You can always use the creative process as the act of realization. You
can always build a house without a blueprint--at least in those parts of the
country that don't require blueprint approvals and waivers to changes in
plans. So, can you have a film without writing--so long as you separate
writing from idea generation and/or the historical process of film creation.
>From a legal, historical, political, economic perspective is it true that
"writing is never film"--no. That is, can you have your film without a
script--probably not in Hollywood. You're not likely to get funded. The
script thereby becomes historical and legal evidence--a plan. So, in the
sense of putting a film together, the film is not about writing at all, but
in the historical/cultural sense all any artistic creation concerns is the
articulation of an idea and the bringing of that idea into being as a
particular kind of media.  In other words, if you can produce a film without
a scipt--or in a more fundamental sense, without an idea about (the)
film--your film may have escaped "writing." After all, the usual questions
are, "How did you produce this piece without a plan? What were you trying to
do?"

For film, the script seems to be considered its primary articulation--take
the recent endeavors to redo certain Orson Welles movies. Whether or not the
script or the shot box resembles the film is another matter. Such scholarly
research involves a process whereby a particular idea can be preserved in
its trace (see Coleridge's "Kubla Khan"). I appreciate the research and
think it can reveal some interesting history, but I find the philosophy
behind this research nonsense--why should I ever believe or care that I'm
seeing the Real film that Orson wanted me to see? I just want to watch a
good movie--don't I?

After watching films about books, people almost always defer to the book--I
think this practice is ridiculous. Derrida, of course, had the insight into
our understanding of truth--our truth, in the Platonic sense, is that which
came first. Everything else is a misrepresentation--we have a heavy bias for
authorial intent So it is that the idea is pure, the scripting of the idea
may be close, but the film will never live up to the idea. Do matters have
to be this way? No. Yet the scholarly question is often, "which film?"
usually followed by "whose film?" or "which version" (cut . . .)--the bias
behind these questions is sometimes legal, sometimes historical, but more
often than not Platonic. That is, the modern-day Platonists believe that
their theory better represents film  than film itself can. So film theory
takes primacy over film making. That's the claim that philosophers and
scientists have historically made. Why should this idea seem new--because
it's termed "writing"? You can have film philosophy whether or not you have
film, but you won't have film without somebody giving you advice.

JMC








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