What Your Story Needs (Tip #35)

On Screen Writing by Edward Dmytryk is not the most marked-up book on writing that I have, but it is one that I return to again and again. Dmytryk directed the Oscar-winning film Crossfire (1947) as well as the highly regarded films The Young Lions, Raintree County and The Caine Mutiny. In total he directed 56 films and later taught at the University of Texas at Austin and USC. I can’t think of an another filmmaker who has better professional and academic credentials than Dmytryk.

“Need is undoubtedly the most common, the most useful, the most malleable, and the most easily understood and accepted basis for a story…In The African Queen two completely diverse personalities are forced to ride the length of a dangerous African river in a dilapidated boat—that is the situation. Their need is two-fold; first, to leave the territory, which is occupied by the enemy, and second, to blow up the German gunboat at the end of their journey. The conflict is also two-fold; first that of the diametrically opposed characters, and second, their battles with the perils of the journey, By the end of the film they have conquered the situation, fulfilled their needs, and resolved both their physical and personality conflicts.”
Edward Dmytryk
On Screen Writing
page 20

Just as I finished this post I learned that The African Queen (Commemorative Box Set) will be released for the first time on Blue-Ray March 23, 2010. The 1951 film directed by John Huston and starring Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart is a classic of classics, and an excellent film/script to study from a filmmaking and screenwriting perspective.

Scott W. Smith

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #41 (Edward Dmytryk)

Edward Dmytryk is not the most recognizable name in film history but you could benefit from knowing his work. First he directed 56 feature films, one of which was nominated for an Academy Award (Crossfire) and two others were nominated for DGA Awards (The Caine Mutiny, The Young Lions).  Though some believe his best films were Murder, My Sweet and Warlock. (An interesting mix of military/war films, film noir, and a western—all which happen to deal with morality.)

Along the way Dmytryk directed some of the greatest Hollywood legends; Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Montgomory Clift, Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, and Elizabeth Taylor.

When Dmytryk is mentioned  today it’s usually in connection with his being one of The Hollywood Ten. Back in the late 40s, ten screenwriters were blacklisted after being charged with contempt of Congress for not answering questions in regard to their involvement in the communist party. It’s a highly debated issue of which much has been written about and documented on film & video.

Several films are said to have been made as a response to the events surrounding The Hollywood Ten including, High Noon, On The Waterfront, and The Crucible.

Dmytryk after serving several months in prison cleared his name by talking to the House Committee on Un-American Activities which saved his career while creating lifelong enemies. Dmytryk pleads his case in his book Odd Man Out, A Memoir of The Hollywood Ten. 

He made films into his seventies and in the 1970s began teaching at the University of Texas in Austin and later taught at USC where he held a chair in filmmaking. In the 80s he wrote a series of books on filmmaking which are some of the few books you can read by an accomplished filmmaker.

“Today, many film-makers are afraid to deal with sentiment, dismissing it as sentimentality. But the ability to properly handle sentiment and its underlying emotion, to get the most out if it without going over the line into mawlisness, is the mark of the dramatist. The greatest dramas ever written or performed have been ‘love stories’, concernef with emotional contacts and conflicts of human beings. If the characters in a film do not  ’touch’ each other, how can they possibly touch the viewer?”
                                                                           Edward Dmytryk
                                                                           On Screen Writing
                                                                           page 101 

Just for the record, I don’t think I had ever seen the word mawkishness before reading it in Dmytryk’s book, nor do I recall ever seeing it used again. It means “Excessively sentimental.”  I thought it was a fitting quote to pull the day after Valentine’s Day, which has it’s share of mawkishness.

And lastly, here is a scene from my favorite Dmytryk film The Caine Mutiny starring Bogart as Captain Queeg. The movie was based on the 1951 Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Herman Wouk. The Oscar nominated screenplay was written by Stanley Roberts who wrote the film version of Death of a Salesman just a few years prior. 

Scott W. Smith

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