Mark Boal: Screenwriters’ Lecture

Mark Boal, the man behind The Hurtlocker, Detroit and  Zero Dark Thirty has hailed the power of the big screen and  “the impact that real movies have had on our culture and that they can continue to have”.

Speaking as part of BAFTA’s 2017 Screenwriters’ Lecture Series he said: “It is quite possible to replicate a cinematic experience in your house, except for one thing—you’re in your home and you’re not trapped: you’re free to pause, you’re free to grab a sandwich, check the Internet. And if you’re really at wits’ end you could even read a book.

“So given that the movie theatre audience is by definition sort of a captive audience—voluntarily, but captive—it’s natural for a writer to ask what to do with this power, what to do with these people who, at least for a short period of time, are captive.”

• Read a full transcript of Mark Boal’s Lecture

Highlighting  the opportunity that film offered for challenging your audience Boal reflected on how “television lets us stay in our bubbles” while “in the movie theatre, on the other hand, you can’t switch the channel” meaning they can be pushed outside their comfort zones more.

Boal said: “If on the other hand the writing is meant to be challenging, and by that I mean challenge audiences specifically—let’s say in the case of Detroit by asking the audience to undergo a bracing experience. Or by challenging audiences by asking them to reshuffle their mythologies of race, class or gender as let’s say Barry Jenkins did with Moonlight; or challenge an audience by asking them to expand their notions of the limits of grief and guilt, as in Manchester by the Sea; or challenge an audience by deconstructing the experience of time itself as Nolan did in Dunkirk—then I think one is better off attempting these sort of artistic manoeuvres with the captive audience of a theatre.”

Given the seriousness of the films that Boal has worked on and the complexity of the characters they feature it seemed fitting that Boal also talks about how important it is to create space for actors to be able to explore and embody their characters in an intuitive way.

Indicating that for him this process often started with the writing he said: “I try to write in a way that gives them as much space as possible… So there’s certain kinds of writing that’s very directive and very um, expositional, where the actor doesn’t have much room because they’re basically there to convey information and it’ll sound weird if they convey the information with too much colour.

“I try to avoid that kind of writing and do writing that does the smallest amount of exposition possible and gives the actor the most room to kind of explore, you know, subtext and different sort of layers of meaning.”

Former journalist Boal also referenced his own passion for the craft behind hard-hitting films like The Hurtlocker and Zero Dark Thirty whose starting points were real life events. Telling the audience: “I don’t want to leave you with the impression that making serious movies is some kind of righteous cross that I bear. I do it because I want to, mostly, and because I really couldn’t think of anything else to do. And while it can seem like quite a struggle and a fight sometimes it’s also a great privilege that I don’t take for granted. In some countries you risk being thrown in prison for trying to dismantle prevailing thought structures. In my country and in this one we don’t face that threat.”