8
WILL HOLLYWOOD NEVER LEARN?
David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch
My nephew…was not an author…. Very few of those employed in writing motion-picture dialogue are. The executives of the studios just haul in anyone they meet and make them sign contracts. Most of the mysterious disappearances you read about are due to this cause. Only the other day they found a plumber who had been missing for years. All the time he had been writing dialogue for the Mishkin Brothers. Once having reached Los Angeles, nobody is safe.
(Wodehouse [1935] 1954: 236–7)
If you go to Hollywood…. And if you really believe in the art of the film…you ought to forget about any other kind of writing. A preoccupation with words for their own sake is fatal to good ...
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