Screenwriting Quote of the Day #38 (John Huston)

John Huston was born in Nevada, Missouri in 1906 and long before he died 81 years later he was a Hollywood legend. He won two Oscars, one for directing and one for writing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. He also directed The African Queen, Key Largo, Moby Dick and The Maltese Falcon.

He not only was often a writer on many of the movies he directed but he also was an actor in over 50 movies,  including his classic role as Noah Cross in Chinatown. He was a man who hung out with Bogart, Hemingway and Arthur Miller. He studied art, was a champion boxer and directed his father Walter in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre  and his daughter Anjelica in Prizzi’s Honor —roles that brought both actors Oscar Awards. 

John Huston lived a full life. I actually saw him the year he died at a post production house parking lot in Burbank, but didn’t have the nerve to approach him. But I thought of him today and figured I might be able to find a fitting quote from him and found it in an interview he did when he was seventy five with Joseph Persico for American Heritage.

Persico:  As a young man, you watched your father rehearse Eugene O’Neill’s Desire Under the Elms, and you met O’Neill. What did you learn from that?

Huston: I learned the shape and substance of a scene, what constitutes a scene, what makes dialogue. Scenes have to have beginnings, a crisis, a climax. And I observed in O’Neill’s dialogue a formula of contradiction where the character says something and contradicts it at the same time. The dramatic heat rises from this irony. And I saw lines on a page take on life. I was instantly fascinated.

Somewhat related post: Screenwriting from Missouri

 

Scott W. Smith