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. 29–30.

When I first meet with the scriptwriter, I never tell him anything, even if I feel there’s a lot to be done. Instead I ask him the same questions I’ve asked myself: What is this story about? What did you see? What was your intention? Ideally, if we do this well, what do you hope the audience will feel, think, sense? In what mood do you want them to leave the theater?

We are two different people trying to combine our talents, so it’s critical that we agree on the intention of the screenplay. Under the best of circumstances, what will emerge is a third intention, which neither of us saw at the beginning. Under the worst of circumstances, an agonizing process of cross-purposes can occur, which will result in something aimless, muddy, or just plain bad winding up on the screen.

Making a movie or producing a television series is a collaborative process. We know this to be true on a practical level whenever we watch the closing credits scroll by.

All those individual involved in making a movie or TV episode, by definition a collaborative effort.

However, there is a distinct meaning of the term when we use in reference to the creative effort of the storytellers, specifically the director, writers, and actors. In the best of all worlds, they work together to create what Lumet calls a “third intention.” The writer has one. The director has another. In combination working with the actors, a third one emerges. That is the magic of cinematic storytelling where 1+1=3. Something more surprising, evocative, and moving comes into being which stretches beyond the writer and director’s original vision of the project.

As Lumet points out, that collaborative process can be one where the talent works at “cross-purposes” with each other. More often than not, this results in “something aimless, muddy, or just plain bad.”

This is yet another reason why the writer must be clear with their story’s intention in script form (see last week’s article for more on this subject). Once the collaborative process begins — when the director, actors, and the rest of the creative team become involved in the project — the story will naturally begin to evolve. The best way a writer may help to steer that process is right there on the page: If we have a clarity of intention about the story and that intention is equally clear in being conveyed on the page, then that intention can be present throughout the entire pre-production and production process.

If you are wondering, “How do I know what my story’s intention is,” if for some reason you don’t have a clarity about it, my suggestion: Focus on your Protagonist. If you immerse yourself in their life and understand what their initial psychological state of being (almost always a Disunity state), and you have a sense about the nature of their metamorphosis (e.g., positive arc, negative arc, refuse change), then I suspect what you intend for the story is wrapped up in that transformation process.

If you are clear what your intention is, that will bring that positive understanding to the collaborative process of working with the director and actors. And that’s when the magic of cinematic storytelling can happen.

Drop by next Sunday for the next in our series on the Sidney Lumet book, Making Movies. For previous installments, go here.

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