Screenwriting 101: Larry Cohen

“When Larry Cohen is writing a screenplay, there are certain things he will not do. He will not rely on an outline. Over the years, he has found that organization and planning make his stories fall flat… He will not use a computer.

‘Oh, no,’ Cohen says on being asked if he owns a laptop. “When I write, I’m watching the movie in my head, imagining it. I want to be in it. I don’t like to see the words that I’m writing.’

Until the moment he pushes ‘record’ and starts to talk, he doesn’t know much about the story he’s telling. Then, suddenly, he does.

‘The people around him cease to exist during that moment, ‘ says his first wife, Janelle Webb Towey, who collaborated on many of the films Cohen wrote, directed, and produced under his own banner, Larco Productions. ‘He just goes bye-bye. His eyes glaze over, and he’s in a world of his own that he’s creating. He walks around with that litte tape-recorder thing, talking. He’s all the characters. He speaks in their voices. His whole body gets into the act.’

‘The best stuff, I don’t remember writing,’ Cohen maintains. ‘The subconscious just takes over.’ His subconscious generally fills up both sides of a ninety-minute cassette, which his conscious self then pays a typist to turn into about twenty-five pages. With ‘ a fix-up here, a fix-up there — but surprisingly very little,’ he says, five good writing days can yield a finished screenplay. Each year, he offers as many as six of these completed (or ‘spec’) scripts for sale to the highest bidder.”

— “The Survivor: Hollywood’s King of Schlock,” The New Yorker, February 2, 2004 about screenwriter-director Larry Cohen

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