"Do Screenwriters Really Matter?"

I came across an interesting article today that brought me back to our discussions on Authorship and Film. The Onion AV Club had an article called “Do Screenwriters Really Matter?” in which two columnists debate about the role of screenwriter vs. the role of directors in film authorship. The piece uses a recent writer/director conflict as a jumping off point. Recently, director Alejandro González Iñárritu and screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga (who have collaborated on three films, Amores Perros, 21 Grams and now Babel) decided to part ways, largely due to conflicts over authorship of their films. Arriaga has been quoted as saying, "When they say it's an auteur film, I say auteurs film. I have always been against the 'film by' credit on a movie. It's a collaborative process and it deserves several authors." However, since mainstream conceptions of film authorship center around the director, its easy to see how Arriaga’s view might have put him into conflict with Iñárritu.

I pulled a few interesting quotes from the article, both from the “screenwriters matter!” and the “directors are the real authors” sides of the debate:

Keith Phipps, or “screenwriters matter!” guy
“I'm not averse to thinking in "a film by" terms, but if there's no script, there's no movie. (Most of the time, at least.) The prominence of writer-directors has made it even harder not to think this way. But I'd argue that most directors work by carefully choosing the right scripts for their sensibilities.”

“You can't build a house without blueprints, and you can't make a movie without words.”

Scott Tobias, or “directors are the real authors” guy
“Yet I'd say that a good 95 percent of the time, directors are either wholly responsible for a film's success or failure, or the issues of attribution are so murky that giving the screenwriter credit is extremely problematic.”

"How a script is executed is so much more crucial than the quality of the script itself"

I found their debate to be very interesting, and I also found myself siding more with Phipps. If you’re making a narrative film, I feel that the screenplay is so important, and that the interplay between a script and the visuals that a director is able to produce based on that script shouldn’t be downplayed. You could have the best director in the world, but with a crappy screenplay, you’re probably going to have a crappy movie. Many good directors impart their own visual stamp on their films, but screenwriters and others involved with the production and authorship of a film should get their due as well.

This is (sort of) the conclusion that Tobias and Phipps came to:
“Okay, so what have we concluded? That it sucks to be a screenwriter even if screenwriters don't suck? That if you really have a voice and vision, you'd better pick up a camera? That screenwriters may be underappreciated, but they're ultimately craftsmen?”

You can read the full article here.