Sundays with Sidney Lumet’s “Making Movies”

A 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 13: The Studio — Was It All For This?, pp. 198, 210, 218.

I'm not "anti-studio." As I said back at the beginning of the book, I'm grateful that someone gives me the millions of dollars it takes to make a movie. But for me, and I think for other directors, there is enormous tension in handing the movie over. Perhaps it's due to the fact that this is the picture’s first step on its way to the public. But the real reason, I think, is that after months of rigid control, the picture is now being taken over by people with whom I have very little influence.

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Without ancillary rights, most pictures would lose money. Commercial success has no relationship to a good or bad picture. Good pictures become hits. Good pictures become flops. Bad pictures make money, bad pictures lose money. The fact is that no one really knows. If anyone did know, he'd be able to write his own ticket.

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My job is to care about and be responsible for every frame of every movie I make. I know that all over the world there are young people borrowing from relatives and saving their allowances to buy their first cameras and put together their first student movies, some of them dreaming of becoming famous and making a fortune. But a few are dreaming of finding out what matters to them, of saying to themselves and anyone who will listen, "I care." A few of them want to make good movies.

The entire chapter, as with the rest of the book, is worth reading. In these pages, Lumet provides an inside look at the studio’s test screening process. If you’ve never experienced one of your movies being screened for a live audience, the details in this chapter are a real eye-opener. I selected the three excerpts above because they provide a lesson for screenwriters.

• …the picture is now being taken over by people with whom I have very little influence. A screenwriter has a similar experience when they submit their script to the studio or production company. This is especially true of a first draft, which is usually the culmination of multiple “private” passes by the writer. But the anxiety is also there even on projects where the writer has incorporated script notes. When you turn in the script, it’s quite literally out of your hands and you have little control over the fate of the project. As much as we try to craft a story which we hope will be good enough to green light the project…
• The fact is that no one really knows. The studio doesn’t know. The producers don’t know. The director doesn’t know. The marketing department doesn’t know. No one actually knows if a screenplay will translate into a successful movie. As a producer once told me, “Making a movie is like a space shuttle launch. There’s a million things that can go wrong.” And that uncertainty exists even before contemplating the question of the movie’s viability as a commercial product. Given that state of affairs, I think Lumet’s final comment is spot on.
• A few are dreaming of finding out what matters to them. There are so many things about a script project screenwriters cannot control, including whether anyone will connect with the screenplay in the first place and all the way down the line to whether the finished film will work as a cinematic story. The one thing we can control is this: The stories we choose to write. Which is why Lumet’s admonition is important: Be one of those individuals who writes something that from Fade In to Fade Out communicates the message, “I care.” Because if that care is present in the story concept … each of the characters … the twists and turns of the plot … the Protagonist’s psychological journey … the individual scene and sequences … the dialogue … the themes … if every line of the script conveys to the reader that you care, there’s a good chance the reader will care, too.

This brings us to the end of this months-long journey through Making Movies. I hope series inspires you to read the book. I consider it essential to one’s education about the movie business and the craft of screenwriting.

To read the entire series, go here.

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

My book The Protagonist’s Journey: An Introduction to Character-Driven Screenwriting and Storytelling is an Amazon #1 Best Seller in Film and Television. Endorsed by over thirty professional screenwriters, novelists, and academics, you may purchase it here.