FROM TYPEWRITER TO THE SCREEN
My father’s father was born on a farm in Geauga County, Ohio, and began life riding a horse to school each day. He was 14 when the first Model T rattled down the dusty back roads and, as time went by, he saw firsthand how the automobile transformed our world. In 1991, when the grand dream of an interstate highway system was finally complete, Grandfather purchased a 40-foot Winnebago and traversed the continent with Grandmother at his side.
Fittingly, Grandfather died behind the wheel. His long life came to an abrupt end just shy of his 102nd birthday when he pushed the limits of his Lamborghini Diablo a smidge too far, and it disintegrated on Germany’s autobahn outside Düsseldorf in an impressive kilometerlong spray of fiberglass and rubber.
To inspire me as I write, I keep the molten remains of his speedometer in my office, pinned at 310 km/hr, or 193 mph.
In much the same way that my grandfather’s life embodied the global revolution in personal transportation, my lengthy (and often tortured) experience co-writing Paramount’s newest big-screen comedy “Downsizing” encapsulates the monumental upheavals that convulsed the craft of screenwriting as we stumbled forth into a treacherous new century.
Although Alexander Payne and I had collaborated on over a dozen screenplays before we began “Downsizing,” nothing could have prepared us for the technological challenges we would face or the sheer physical stamina required to finish what some have called our magnum opus — an anguished cri de couer, with just the slightest touch of creme de menthe.
Indeed, what wondrous advances our profession has made in the years since we first set pen to paper. Our work on “Downsizing” began during the dark ages of stencil reproduction and by the time we’d umlauted our final “o,” we found ourselves at the dawn of our current utopian age — a time when every writer, regardless of race, creed or gender, has equal access to the smart drugs and/or fidget spinner of his or her choice.
Dear readers, who among you is infirm enough to recall the unique odor of the noxious fumes that churned forth from our beloved mimeograph machines? I recall with brain-addled fondness the delicious high we felt as we turned the crank and watched in awe as the duplication drum plunged into a sea of toxic chemicals and emerged, choking and gasping — but victorious — bearing yet another brilliant (and slightly damp) sample of whip-smart dialogue or (with equal frequency) our bimonthly newsletter for the Seattle Junior Magician’s Club.
Yes, where once we groped along in the darkness, tabbing across the page to arrive at yet another noisy carriage return, today’s screenwriter benefits from a host of miraculous advancements. As a struggling young scrivener, I myself never would have imagined that space bars would one day be nothing more than a distant, painful memory.
Or that the power of procrastination might be harnessed to restore the beauty of an old-growth forest. Or, most astounding of all, that the right and left margins would expand and burst beyond the limits of the page itself !
Perhaps we should return to our screenwriting roots, sharpen a pencil, and begin scribbling on the sturdy pages of a good, old-fashioned legal pad. But why should we suffer?
If my grandfather had his life to live again, I’m sure he wouldn’t choose to die quietly on his horse. He’d leave as he did the first time around, screaming across the German countryside, eyeballs forced back into his brain, with just the hint of a smile on his weathered, rippling face.