Screenwriting 101: Charlie Kaufman

A video of Charlie Kaufman’s acceptance speech as the 2023 Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement recipient presented at the recent WGA Awards ceremony.

Here is a transcript of the speech.

Twenty years ago, I’m in the back of an auditorium watching a seminar called “How to Pitch.” One by one, supplicants approach a microphone at the foot of the stage on which sits a panel of experts: producers, executives, etceteras. No writers.

The first student of the pitch speaks, voice shaking: “We open on a barge in the middle of…”

“Stop! You’ve lost me already.”

Student of the pitch two, voice shaking: “A young man falls from the sky into…”

“No, no! Jesus, come on!”

And so it goes, these nervous young people step up to be shot down. Sadistic, I think. Payback for the way the panelists were once treated, I think. Garbage, I think. Training, I think.

We writers are trained by the business. We are trained to believe what we do is secondary to what they do. We are trained to do the bidding of people who are motivated not by curiosity, but by protecting their jobs. And we lose sight of what our work is.

It is not to contribute to their fortunes or our own. It is not to please them or critics or even the audiences who have also been trained.

Our work is to reflect the world. Say what is true in the face of so much lying. The rest is window dressing at best, Triumph of the Will at worst.

Adrian Rich wrote: “I do know that art means nothing if it simply decorates the dinner table of the power which holds it hostage.”

The world is a mess. The world is beautiful. The world is impossibly complicated. And we have the opportunity to explore that.

If we give that up for the carrot, then we might as well be the executives, the etceteras. Because we have become their minions.

I have dropped the ball. Wasted years seeking the approval of people with money.

Don’t get trapped in their world of box office numbers. You don’t work for them. You don’t work for the world of box office numbers. You work for the world.

Don’t worry about how to pitch. Don’t pitch. Be nervous. Be vulnerable. Just make your story honest and tell it.

They’ve tricked us into thinking we can’t do it without them, but the truth is they cannot do anything of value without us.

Thank you for this award. I’m so grateful for the opportunity it’s afforded me to reflect on what it is that’s important to me about the work that we do.

They’ve tricked us into thinking we can’t do it without them, but the truth is they cannot do anything of value without us.

It reminds me of that anecdote about legendary Hollywood producer Irving Thalberg in a meeting with a group of screenwriters:

“At times Irving Thalberg seemed to hate his very dependence on writers and his frustration that he could not perform their functions. During one heated script session he said almost contemptuously, ‘What’s all this business about being a writer? It’s just putting one word after another.’ Lenore Coffee corrected him: ‘Pardon me, Mr. Thalberg; it’s putting one right word after another.’”

Words have power. Writers who know how put the right words after one another can wield that power.

For more Screenwriting 101 posts, go here.