Sundays with Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies”

A weekly series featuring reflections on filmmaking by one of the truly great movie directors.

Roger Ebert said this about Making Movies: “It has more common sense in it about how movies are actually made than any other I have read.” That alone is enough reason to read this book authored by Sidney Lumet.

Known as an actor’s director, Lumet directed 17 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Katharine Hepburn, Rod Steiger, Al Pacino, Ingrid Bergman, Albert Finney, Chris Sarandon, Faye Dunaway, Peter Finch, Beatrice Straight, William Holden, Ned Beatty, Peter Firth, Richard Burton, Paul Newman, James Mason, Jane Fonda and River Phoenix. Bergman, Dunaway, Finch and Straight won Oscars for their performances in a Lumet movie.

Among his filmmaking credits are such stellar movies as 12 Angry Men, The Pawnbroker, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, Network, Equus, Prince of the City, The Verdict, and Running on Empty. He also has five screenwriting credits including Q&A and Night Falls on Manhattan.

As I’ve done with Sundays with Ray Bradbury and Sunday’s with Stephen King’s “On Writing,” I will work my way through Lumet’s book focusing on insights applicable to the craft of screenwriting.

Today: From “Making Movies,” Chapter 2: The Script: Are Writers Necessary?, pp. 47–48.

On every movie I’ve done that I felt was really good, a strange amalgam was reached that surprised both the writer and me. Of course, the original intent is present. But all of the individual contributions from all the different departments add up to a total far greater than their individual parts. Movie-making works very much like an orchestra: the addition of various harmonies can change, enlarge, and clarify the nature of the theme.

In that sense, a director is “writing” when he makes a picture. But I think it’s important to keep the words specific. Writing is writing. Sometimes the writer includes directions in the script. He gives long descriptions of characters or of physical settings. Close-ups, long shots, and other camera directions may be written into the script. I read these carefully, because they are reflections of the writers intention. I may follow them literally or find a completely different way of expressing the same intention. Writing is about structure and words. But the process I’ve been describing — of the sum being greater than the parts — that’s shaped by the director. They’re different talents.

Clearly, Lumet was not a director threatened by a writer’s vision. On the contrary, he opened himself to the writer’s perspective. This would seem to be common sense. Why wouldn’t a director want to consider the visual point of view of the writer? After all — and especially with original material — it’s the writer who has lived with the story the longest time at the point the director gets involved in the process.

However, there are plenty of directors who want nothing to do with the writer’s view of how scenes might be framed, how moments might be shot. Hell, it’s a struggle for the WGA to get directors to allow writers to simply be on set.

I get it. A lot of directors don’t want screenwriters dictating how they approach their job. Hence, the shift away from using camera shots and directing jargon in screenplays.

But if movie-making is actually a collaborative effort on the part of the entire team — although when directors take A Film By credit, that would seem to undercut the very concept — then it makes sense for the director who shepherds the project along to get the benefit of those team members’ perspectives including the screenwriter.

Lumet was confident enough in his own creative vision and skill as a director, he welcomed the writer’s input. Perhaps with some directors who are not so open, it’s more about their insecurity and less about creative expression.

Ultimately, Lumet is right: Writing is writing. And movies are fundamentally a director’s medium. In the best of all worlds, director and writer respect each other enough to have an open line of communication about the story.

That’s the starting point for the magic to happen in a truly collaborative process.

Come back next Sunday for more of Lumet’s thoughts on story and working with screenwriters.

For previous installments, go here.

For more background on Sidney Lumet’s filmmaking career, go here.

To purchase my book The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling, go here.