“You can’t learn bull riding, except by getting on the bull.”
—David Mamet
Several years ago I wrote a post titled Can Screenwriting Be Taught? and I used parts of that for the introduction to my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles.
Some say writing is a natural gift like a bird taking flight, and others say it’s a craft that—like plumbing or playing the violin—takes time to become proficient. The title of this post comes from screenwriter/playwright David Mamet giving a thumbnail-sized version of Aristotle’s Poetics; Start at the beginning and when you get to the end—stop.
That’s on par with advice that William Faulkner gave when people came to hear him give a talk about writing. He reportedly asked that if they wanted to be writers what they were doing there instead of home writing.
When Emmy-winning writer Hugh Wilson was asked about the writing process he said, “I think there’s a whole lot of spooky-dust involved in this.” Yes, there is a mysterious process to writing and you need talent. But is there something more tangible? Helpful? Well, you definitely don’t need a formal education as many have proven, but at some point you do need to learn dramatic principles.
In the introduction to my book I chose to highlight Moss Hart specifically because he grew up in poverty, never went to college, and launched his career during The Great Depression. Nor was he the kind of writer who just flapped his wings and flew to instant success.
“It is one thing to have a flair for play-writing or even a ready wit with dialogue. It is quite another to apply these gifts in the strict and demanding terms of a fully articulated play so that they emerge with explicitness, precision and form. All of this and a great deal more I learned from George Kaufman.”
—Moss Hart
Act One: An Autobiography
But before Hart learned from Kaufman, he spent time summers in the Catskills Mountains (then known as the Borsch Belt) where he directed several plays each week over the summer at popular resorts. (At one point he was the entertainment director in charge of 70 people.) And he only got that job because he had a passion for theater in New York City where he sometimes directed plays after work.
He worked in a fur warehouse for over two years until he got an office job with a theater manager. One of the perks of the job was he was able to get free tickets to see Broadway plays nightly. This was in an era before television when there where over 70 theaters on during peak season in New York City. Moss said he learned from bad plays as well as the good ones.
“I simply read the plays themselves, I read the published version of plays that I had seen and then plays that I had never seen, sitting there day after day like a bacteriologist trying to isolate a strange germ under the beam of a new more powerful microscope.”
—Moss Hart
Act One
All of those experiences led to Hart’s first Broadway hit (Once in a Lifetime) at age 26. A decade later Kaufman and Hart won the Pulitzer Prize for their depression era play You Can’t Take it with You. As a screenwriter, Hart earned two Oscar nominations and wrote the 1934 version of A Star is Born starring Judy Garland.
Screenwriting from Iowa 