Brian Helgeland: Screenwriters’ Lecture

Brian Helgeland, the LA Confidential and Mystic River writer explained why screenwriters must ‘fight’, as well as paying tribute to the late Frank Pierson as he delivered his BAFTA Screenwriters Lecture.

Addressing a packed crowd at BFI Southbank, Helgeland began by listing the eight jobs he’s capable of doing: selling scrap newspaper, washing dishes at a nursing home, caretaking at a nursing home, manning a drugstore, working nights at a gas station, fishing, screenwriting and directing. These days though, he said there are only four he’s willing to do. And thankfully, screenwriting is one.

Watch Helgeland’s lecture below:

After getting started winning second place in a writing competition, Helgeland went on to write over ’60-odd’ screenplays; 18 of which have been made into films. He cut his teeth in horror – Nightmare on Elm Street was an early credit – before winning an Oscar for LA Confidential and a BAFTA nomination for Mystic River.

The screenwriter has also been a part of many collaborations, including with the late Tony Scott on The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 and Man On Fire. And is considered one of Hollywood’s premier crime and suspense writers.

Explaining the process he goes through, Helgeland said: “When you start writing a script you’re an architect and there’s nothing creative about it – that’s a slight exaggeration, but it’s true.”

Helgeland also outlined his pragmatic approach to filmmaking during his lecture. Highlighting that a film must be ‘commercial’ but it needn’t be populist: ‘all it has to do is make more money than it cost to make. So if your movie cost $10 to make and it makes $20, it’s commercial.’ Likewise, ‘creativity’ should be confined to the part before the scriptwriting starts: once the ideas and themes are there, the construction of the script should be workmanlike.

Loneliness and writers’ block are also inevitable, he said. ‘If you’re unwilling to go through the pain of [writers’ block] you will not get the reward on the other side,’ he claimed. ‘Writer’s block is not an obstacle to writing – it is writing.’ But the huge amount of time a script takes pays off: ‘if you spend two thousand hours doing something there is a satisfaction in that. It’s an accomplishment.’

Resilience is key too – even after the script’s finished. ‘Screenwriters have to fight,’ – and that means defending their work and their ability. ‘Executives should dread that you’re coming in, because you should make them feel stupid… and you get away with this by being good at what you do.’ But this adversarial stance shouldn’t extend to the writer-director relationship: ‘I’ve had a lot of luck with… four different directors I’ve worked with more than once, and you need them and they need you. You’re kind of lost without each other.’

Helgeland finished the lecture with an anecdote about meeting his hero Frank Pierson, writer of Cool Hand Luke – who, after a chance encounter in a London hotel, had requested Helgeland present his Lifetime Achievement Award at the Boston Film Festival.

“He died a couple of months ago, and I saw him about six months ago in a restaurant and he looked so mad that I didn’t go over to him. But if I had, and I knew he was going to die – which of course I didn’t – I would have told him that yes, I did become a screenwriter because of him”, he said.

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