We were able to spend a few minutes with The Departed screen writer William Monahan about his up and coming project The Gambler (hitting our shores on Friday 23rd January), and he had quite a few interesting things to say about his approach to writing, the original movie starring James Caan, and the subject of early 'Oscar buzz'. It's available below for your reading pleasure.
What
attracted you to the project? Were you familiar with the 1974 film?
I hadn’t
seen the whole thing. After I got the commission I wouldn’t watch
it as a matter of process. It came out when I was thirteen and seemed
to be about sports gambling, which was not my cup of tea, nor was
gambling in general. I keep getting asked about the original, and I
think more and more that nobody has seen it, and has only heard some
myth-making about “story” which is running head on against what I
do when I adapt. Screenwriting is not “story.” It’s
performance, in which I see no difference between script and broader
dramatic tradition, and I’m very conscious of that. The Departed as
a title was a bit tongue in cheek because it meant departure from the
original material. Romeo and Juliet existed in the Italian but it got
run through another brain, competency, and a Warwickshire childhood.
If you know that Shakespeare rarely did an original you know
everything. The first principle about writing is that it’s the
teller, not the tale. That’s actually in the classroom scene in the
film oddly enough. I do think that the man who wrote a book about
screenwriting called “Story” ought to be hanged because he’s
done awful damage to perception of the profession and has vulgarized
it. But his purpose was to make everybody think they could do
screenwriting. The ramifications in film have been dreadful.
What separates
this from the original?
I keep
getting asked about collaboration or my approach, as if I were some
sort of penitent at the gates of Canossa, but I work more as a
novelist and people more or less let me do my thing. I’m not the
Literary Department. I have never done anything but gamble for
infinite stakes, certainly, but in the light of day, The Gambler
became a story about courage against odds, not one about addiction. I
don’t believe in addiction. If you look at any “addiction” you
see self-indulgence, and, sorry, that’s the way it is. If people
get paid saying otherwise, well, we also have priests on payroll. In
this The Gambler the protagonist does very intentionally risk a kind
of underworld suicide by cop, but he heads towards freedom and life,
with the question remaining about what life is. The realism in the
70s was never really real. It was just camera becoming a bit more
unmoored than it was in Doris Day films and a lot of function without
a script, none of it very high, except in the case of a controlling
intelligence. If I had to pick the best films of the 70s I would pick
Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, the Duellists, Alien, and the theatrical
cut of Apocalypse Now. Not demotic experiment and relative disorder.
I’d take Star Wars nicking “Hidden Fortress” over Cassavetes,
much as I admire what he tried, or Yoko Ono doing a fly crawling on
someone’s bum.
How was the
process of getting from the first draft to the start of production?
The script
was written. I got a call and learned that Mark was going to do it
with Rupert Wyatt, not to mention John Goodman, and the other actors,
I went through the roof.
Did any of
the additions to the cast make you go back and make changes to better
suit their voice, or was the script written with a cast in mind?
No, the
script was the script and was cast and shot off the first draft.
It's quite
a bleak story. Did you ever find the need to get away from all the
misery?
It’s
actually a triumph. A man risks everything, wins, and then walks away
in a state of freedom to whatever happens next. So do other
characters, such as Neville Baraka who is too good for low
circumstances and intends to go beyond them. There’s nothing bleak
about it. Most people are transforming to better conditions and
committing acts of bravery and rejection of their circumstances, or
are just good eggs telling the truth, like John Goodman’s
character, or Mark’s in his classroom.
The Gambler was expected to be a dark horse in the Oscar race. Did this take you
or any one else in the production by surprise?
I don’t
think that horse is very dark. People start going on and on about
Oscars as if they’re experts before they’ve seen anything. In my
case as a writer, nothing’s real until the script itself is
delivered to the various guild and Academy voters, because before
that everything is undiluted horseshit. I believe that John Goodman
will win Best Supporting apart from anything else.
What is
next for you?
I just
recently learned I could join BAFTA because I had a nomination, and
they have a great bar. As far as work is concerned, it’s more
screenplay contracts, and staying at home as much as possible.
