Sky Arts are currently showing
BAFTA’s star screenwriter lectures. I saw one starring John Logan on Saturday.
It was reassuring and fascinating for a number of reasons.
People often say “I want to produce great work, but I have
another job!” Here is something to hearten you: John Logan, writer of Gladiator
and countless other great movies, spent 10 years working in a library and
writing plays on the side. The whole of Joy Division held down second jobs even
when they were huge (genuinely). Michael McIntyre worked in the Carphone
Warehouse for 5 years before turning full time pro. Phillip Larkin worked in
Hull University library for his entire career.
Another thing I found heartening about Logan was his
thoughts on re-writing: he wrote 26 drafts for Any Given Sunday. His first draft he submits for notes is after
dozens of personal drafts. He says:
“Writing is easy. It’s the rewriting which is difficult.
Having to put a critical analysis to your work is grinding.”
Finally, he says that when he writes films: “you’re always
looking for a visual metaphor” in a scene. And once you have a motif you can
seed it throughout the film.
To conclude, I thought I’d quote a section of that famous
speech from Any Given Sunday which seems relevant to the life of a creative,
and indeed almost anyone:
“We’re in hell right now gentlemen, really, and we can stay
here, get the shit kicked out of us, or we can fight our way back into the
light, we can climb out of hell, one inch at a time…life’s a game of inches, so’s
football…the inches we need are everywhere around us, they’re in every break of
the game, every minute, every second, on this team we fight for that inch, on
this team we tear ourselves and everyone else around us to pieces for that
inch, we claw with our finger nails for that inch. Because we know when we add
up all those inches that’s going to make the fucking difference between winning
and losing, between living and dying…that’s what living is: the six inches in
front of your face.”
So go and make that first small step, claw yourself forward
that inch, go make something.
Here’s Al Pacino making the point rather well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO4tIrjBDkk
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