No more pauses for Pinter
I am both deeply engaged in art and deeply engaged in politics and sometimes those two meet and sometimes they don't.I was psyched to see that one of my favorite playwrights, Harold Pinter, just won the Nobel Prize for Literature. My senior year at Villanova I took a course on Modern British Drama, and The Homecoming was one of the best things I'd ever read. Back then I hated reading novels (the kinds of novels English majors have to read, at least) and could take or leave poetry, but adored reading plays.
--playwright, screenwriter and poet Harold Pinter
Which is odd, considering they're not written to be read. Perhaps my penchant for plays explains my knack for dialogue and frustration with inner monologues and long descriptive passages. I haaaaate having to explain how a character feels. It feels so artificial. I prefer to show it through action or dialogue. In all of Requiem I had only one paragraph where Lucifer stood still and ruminated on a problem. One paragraph, and I tried so hard to take it out.
That's one reason why I love screenwriting. What does the character feel? Let the actor decide! What does the setting look like? Let the production designer decide! And in a screenplay, I never ever have to describe what something smells like.
Where was I? Oh, Harold Pinter. He's cool.
1 Comments:
Posted by:
Rob S. at 10/20/2005 3:19 PM
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