INTERVIEWER
Can working for the movies hurt your own writing?
FAULKNER
Nothing can injure a man’s writing if he’s a first-rate writer. If a man is not a first-rate writer, there’s not anything can help it much. The problem does not apply if he is not first rate because he has already sold his soul for a swimming pool.
INTERVIEWER
Does a writer compromise in writing for the movies?
FAULKNER
Always, because a moving picture is by its nature a collaboration, and any collaboration is compromise because that is what the word means—to give and to take.
INTERVIEWER
Which actors do you like to work with most?
FAULKNER
Humphrey Bogart is the one I’ve worked with best. He and I worked together in To Have and Have Not and The Big Sleep.
via Paris Review – The Art of Fiction No. 12, William Faulkner.
I love his answer to the question about compromise.
It’s a simple answer that resounds with truth; writing for movies is rewriting, and being rewritten, compromise is key.
Indeed. And if you don’t like that, then you’re in the wrong line of work. Of course, there are good re-writes and bad re-writes, but no point in getting bitter about it.
If you haven’t already come across them, a couple of interesting books about writers in Hollywood: “Huxley in Hollywood” by David Dunaway, and “Monster: Living Off the Big Screen” by John Gregory Dunne…
I’ll look those up right now! Thanks!
🙂
They look pretty interesting. Added them to my wishlist.