Backstory 1: Interviews with Screenwriters of Hollywood's Golden Age - Softcover

McGilligan, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520056892 ISBN 13: 9780520056893

Publisher: University of California Press, 1988

Synopsis

The illustrious line-up in this volume includes Hitchcock collaborator Charles Bennett, the sophisticated husband-and-wife team of Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, the Astaire-Rogers writer Allan Scott, and many more.

About this title

Review

Until Backstory burst on the scene in 1986, not much had been written about the early days of Hollywood screenwriting. But as Patrick McGilligan states in his fine introduction, those days were quite different from the ones that followed. The whole craft of the screenplay didn't develop until the end of the silent era, and after it had developed, writers tended to be isolated from one another. Screenwriting was seen as hack work, something a legitimate playwright, novelist, or even a journalist did to raise money. Backstory 1 features interviews with 15 of the finest Hollywood scenarists from the 1920s and '30s, including Charles Burnett, James M. Cain, Lenore Coffee, Philip Dunne, Julius J. Epstein, Albert Hackett, Norman Krasna, Richard Maibaum, Casey Robinson, and Donald Ogden Stewart. These writers may not be familiar, but their movies surely are. This anthology of interviews is invaluable for its insights into a budding craft and into artists whose work has been obscured by critics and audiences who preferred to propel actors, directors, and producers into stardom.

From Publishers Weekly

Hollywood reminiscences are apparently as limitless as they are irresistible to film buffs. Backstoryan old screenwriting term for the story that has taken place before the action of a movie beginsgives veteran screenwriters their turn in this collection of 14 interviews.It has the usual quota of who-said-what-to-whom anecdotes, but with less than their usual amusement value. Among the interviews, some of which have been previously published, only three were conducted by McGilligan, a contributing editor to American Film. Long the victims of notorious mistreatment by the studios and now well advanced in years (several have died since these interviews took place), the writers here can be forgiven the impulse to have the last word and settle accounts, but the frequent squabbling over screen credits and insistence on their own importance gives this collection an aggrieved, sometimes crabby, tone. There are plesant memories and bright patches (Julius Epstein, Donald Ogden Stewart), valuable comments on the art of screenwriting and occasionally some interesting gossip (director Frank Capra had a painting of Mussolini on his bedroom wall; WW II Secret Service/FBI meetings were held in Cecil B. DeMille's office), but overall the interviews confirm the cliche that old Hollywood was a bad place for writers, leaving them well-paid but frustrated, cynical, or wistfully disappointed. Photos. First serial to American Film. (December
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1988
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520056892
• ISBN 13: 9780520056893
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 382