The Word Cloud

Finally got around to watching Desk Set which was, as expected, fun but by no means exceptional, and extremely stagey. This week's film is the 1952 screwball comedy Monkey Business (Wednesday, 3.10pm, Filmfour- they're always on Filmfour!) starring Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe, not to be confused with the 1931 comedy Monkey Business starring the Marx Brothers (which is also worth watching). It's a late screwball comedy, not up with such classics as His Girl Friday or Bringing up Baby (both also starring Grant) but still a very funny film as long as you're willing to buy into the ludicrous plot, invloving a formula which makes people act like children. The film was based on a story by Harry Segall and was written by I.A.L. (Izzy) Diamond, Charles Lederer and Ben Hecht. I've been wanting to do one of these blogs about Hecht but there never seemed any urgency because on any given week there is bound to be a film on that Hecht at least contributed to. Hecht is believed to have worked on around 70 screenplays, many of them uncredited. He also wrote plays and books and later TV shows giving him a grand total of 147 writing credits on IMDB. His first credited work was for Josef Von Sternberg's Underworld which won him best story at the first Academy Awards Ceremony in 1927, and he continued to work up to his death in 1964 (The Magnificent Showman (1964) is his last screen credit though he also contributed to Casino Royale (1966)). Hecht was a dialogue expert, crafting sharp, witty lines delivered at breakneck pace; His Girl Friday (based on Hecht's play The Front Page and to which he made uncredited contributions) is still officially the fasted talking film ever made. He mostly wrote romantic screwball comedies and gangster films but there is barely a genre he did not try, he worked several times with Hitchcock and contributed to the classic John Ford western Stagecoach. He even wrote the story for the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business. Despite this quality Hecht worked fast (obviously), able to turn out a script in a couple of weeks, or in the case of The Unholy Garden, 12 hours. His journalistic training taught him to write to a deadline. (That said, he is believed to have farmed some of the work out to junior writers, adding the Hechtian flourishes himself, like a Renaissance painter and his apprentices.) He also had a lack of regard for his film work compared to his stageplays, something he shared with many writers of the time. It would be ludicrous to try and sum up Hecht's career here, it would take more than this blog just to list his films, but what can an aspiring writer learn from one of the true greats? Well, Hecht often worked with a collaborator, usually Charles MacArthur or, as in the case of Monkey Business, Charles Lederer, and when your specialty is dialogue then that's a big advantage. I used to work with partners but very seldom do now and bantering out the dialogue is one thing I miss. Another thing worth taking onboard is that dialogue is important. I am a huge advocate of visual storytelling and I try to reduce dialogue as much as possible; cinema is a visual medium. But let's face facts; a director dictates the visuals, they treat stage directions- no matter how carefully written- as a guide. They are less likely however to change the dialogue, particularly if it is good (it still happens of course but not to the same degree). A director will never ask a writer for a new visual image, but they will often ask for a new line to be delivered immediately (even a novice like me has had that request). A screenwriter must be a visual storyteller, but dialogue is the more saleable skill. Another thing Hecht learnt from his years as a journalist was to listen to people talk; that's how you learn dialogue (I think).