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Ghost writers

UPDATE: I found out a little bit more about this « situation ». Turns out that it was not an oversight as there was an issue around the screenplay credits. It’s a bit complicated, as this stuff often is…

I went to a movie premiere last night in Montreal. It was a big deal: long red carpet, tons of journalists and cameras, lots of famous people (my sister and I got to sit right next to the cutest one) and numerous fans waiting to get autographs. The huge theater was packed with excited people who laughed even during the parts that weren’t funny (though I have to admit that most of the movie was actually quite funny).

At the end of the film, the producer introduced all the members of his team – and when I say all, I mean almost all of them: the large cast, the supporting roles, the distributor, the dp, the composer, the musician who did the theme song, the costume person, etc. Everybody got to stand up or walk up to the stage. Everybody… but the screenwriters, who weren’t even mentioned. Un oubli? �a doit bien �tre un oubli…

I really have to get used to the fact that movies write themselves and that screenplays just appear by magic, without anybody being responsible for them.

A memory that spills

« There ought to be a poet submerged in every novelist. He needs a memory that spills easily, a memory with a loose top, so that any chance can tip it and send rolling the vast and invaluable supply of what the writer did not know he knew. »

Wallace Stegner, « Sensibility and Intelligence » in Saturday Review, 1958.