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.

Finally, I must confess that the closeness expressed for writers might be a bit disingenuous on my part. There are times when writers are a pain in the ass. (I’m sure any number of writers have felt the same about me.) sometimes they have taken the job as a gig to earn a buck (as I have), to work rather than not work (as I also have). I’m pretty sure that if I want a new writer on the script, the studio or producer will let me pick one. But I’ve only done this once. Final cut is a tremendous source of security. I can eliminate a scene or a line that I don’t like or haven’t liked from the beginning. This has happened more than once. But not often. The director, because he says “Print,” has a lot of power. But the results are best when he doesn’t have to use it.

Fact: Movies are a director’s medium. But unless they actually write the script, the fact they go off and make a movie does not mean they are the author of the film, no matter the auteur theory. They along with the actors interpret what is written in the script.

One of the reasons why Lumet was such a respected director is the respect he gave to the writers. In fact to my knowledge, Network, which Lumet directed, is the only movie in which the screenwriter received a “by” credit. It’s not “written by Paddy Chayefsky.” It’s “by Paddy Chayefsky.” It was Lumet’s way of acknowledging that if anyone were the author of the movie, it was Chayefsky. That is respect.

In the best of all worlds, there is a mutual respect in the filmmaking process. The writer respects the director. The director respects the writer.

Lumet got that.

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.