Talk to any successful New York playwright, even those with Tony and Drama Desk credits, and you’ll find he or she probably harbors an inventory of unproduced screenplays, spec scripts and sitcom pilots that led to a paycheck but went nowhere. Deemed too literate, witty or wry, these purchased scripts are often scrapped in lieu of lighter fare, leaving this year’s potentially best movies sitting on the shelves of fumbling film executives.
This became the chorus line when a panel of playwrights met this week to discuss “Stage vs. Screen.” Hosted by the Alliance of Resident Theatres in New York, the event brought Warren Leight, Diana Son, Douglas Carter Beane, Kenneth Lonergan and Neena Beber together at the same table. Though their plays and backgrounds differ dramatically, all currently have films in the works and three of the five have development deals with major networks. Naturally, these writers knew better than to bemoan their good fortune, but they certainly weren’t thrilled about writing scripts that rarely see celluloid.
Take, for example, Carter Beane’s sardonic Off-Broadway smash “As Bees in Honey Drown.” Though Universal optioned the rights in 1998, it halted production last year when Carter Beane refused to make his gay male lead “bisexual” or “shy”–as studio execs politely phrased it. “They stopped calling, but the check still cleared,” said Beane, who also sold three plays to New Line Cinema that have yet to be made. “In a nutshell, I got a lot of money.”
Theater professionals, who once scolded their students for “selling out,” have learned to accept the exodus to Los Angeles. Robert Brustein, former director of Harvard’s American Repertory Theatre and a contributor to The New Republic, used to offer a course called “The Repertory Ideal,” where he talked about the unattainable ideal of writing plays in a capitalist society. Though he’s personally disappointed when his students opt for movie or sitcom writing, he can’t doom them to a life with no income.
“They’re not monks, and they’re not nuns–they can’t take a vow of poverty,” said Brustein in a recent phone interview. “As long as they remember that the theater is where their best work is done and where they really grow.”
In a world where lots of playwrights can’t even afford to see theater in New York–let alone pay their rent with royalties from off- or off-off-Broadway productions–a paycheck makes a big difference. Many who once used to supplement their theater incomes with movie and sitcom writing now rely on it almost entirely.
“I write for TV and film so that I can afford to go to the theater,” said Diana Son, a staff writer last year for NBC’s “The West Wing” and the author of the acclaimed play “Stop Kiss.” “I saw more plays last year when I was getting a weekly paycheck from “The West Wing” than any of my friends in the theater,” she said. “And I lived in Los Angeles.”
But Son also noted that “some things aren’t worth the money.” She left Los Angeles and didn’t even watch the Emmys (in which “The West Wing” swept away nine awards). Back home in New York, she now makes her own schedule, adapting “Stop Kiss” for film and prepping her new play “GOLD” for its December opening.
Kenneth Lonergan, whose credits include the play “The Waverly Gallery” and the Billy Crystal-Robert DeNiro movie “Analyze This,” agreed that writers need to put their feet down and demand more from the medium of film. Lonergan still hasn’t seen “Analyze This,” which underwent 14 rewrites between his initial draft and finally reaching the screen. By the time production began, he said, his only recognizable words in the film were the title–and his name, of course. The experience left him feeling little right of ownership.
As a result, he took a hiatus from Hollywood to write and direct a low-budget independent film called “You Can Count on Me.” Due out in November, the film shared the Sundance 2000 Grand Jury Prize and won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. “I’m proud of it because every word is mine,” he said.
Of course, Lonergan’s independent-film experience is hardly a universal truth. Low-budget indies offer artistic control and have a higher chance of getting made, but often can’t find distribution when completed. So in the end, what’s a playwright to do? Says Lonergan: “Write for theater until the movie money’s gone.” Bravo.
