Why no one can find Thomas Pynchon. Ugh. This is so annoying -- upon his own reflections on Gravity's Rainbow:
"I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries arguing over what I meant, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality," he once said of his dominant novel — perhaps Pynchon accomplished with his life.Sounds dull to me. Made me think of this interview with William Monahan I recently read.
I think that scripts should be published, but they are published, really, because when you’re a screenwriter, your stuff ends up in samizdat form on thousands and thousands of desks and shelves across the industry. If you write a screenplay that gets circulated, you have a bigger readership than any literary novelist. And it’s an educated audience as well. Some reviewer might be out there saying, obviously Edge of Darkness didn’t come off because of the script, blah blah blah, but everybody has read the script, except the journalist attacking it.I've never thought of screenwriting this way, but it is totally true. I read a decent number of books and the majority of them, no one else I know has read. Sometimes, they've heard of them. Occasionally, one or two people I meet have also read those same books. But with certain scripts that have passed around the industry -- tons of people have read. Of course, I'm talking about people who's job it is to read scripts, ie execs and agents and other screenwriters. But this is a curious thing, isn't it, when you think about it. Even many scripts written by friends or peers which will never get made are more read in my everyday circle than the newest Pynchon novel. Kind of fascinating, if you think about it purely on literary terms.
3 comments:
Have to say the comparison seems pretty far off to me. People in the industry reads scripts cause its their job, I don't see the correlation to people buying a book to read for their own enjoyment. Maybe a couple of scripts a year could be sold to a paying public but there's been years and years of opportunity for that and probably a valid reason it hasn't happened yet. Your feelings for Pynchon and his ilk of literary novelists aside there are people reading their books the world over not just a couple thousand film folk in Los Angeles. Yes, maybe Bill Monahan's script gets read as much as a forgotten literary novel but then you're comparing one of the biggest screenwriters in hollywood to a marginal novelist.
i don't think the fact that people read scripts as part of their jobs necessarily diminishes the act. kids read books in school for school and people in the publishing industry read books for their jobs and this doesn't necessarily make the act of reading less valuable from a literary POV (it does from a business POV because they are obviously not paying customers).
and i think monahan does overestimate how many people read screenplays - it is more likely in the high hundreds than the thousands. however, i would point out it isn't just people in LA who read these screenplays -- at least not with the internet anymore. these pdf scripts get out there into the world to people who follow things like the blacklist or script shadow or even jon august's podcast. maybe these are still all just wannabe screenwriters, but i still don't really think that diminishes the fact that people do read these things. i mean, most of the people reading pynchon are probably wannabe novelists.
anyhow, i think it's clear the public has no interest in paying money for published scripts - whether they've been made or not - so on the business level, yes, the comparison might not be apt. but the point is at least interesting on a literary level -- that so many people have read many of these scripts -- every year probably 100 or so scripts are read and discussed by a large, educated audience, whereas the same can't be said every year for 100 novels.
The availability of scripts online is a big thing, true. Something about the insular nature of the readership being mostly aspiring screenwriters online still makes it different to most novel reading I think. But then again a large percentage of pynchon readers themselves are probably aspiring writers of varying degrees.
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