The Word Cloud

Back to normal this week, The Fugitive is on ITV 2 at 12.05 am Tuesday morning and is described in the Radio Times as a 'frantic thriller', I can't decide if that's someone trying to be clever since Frantic is another Harrison Ford film. Possibly I'm reading too much into it. Anyway, I have two reasons for picking The Fugitive (beside the fact that it's an excellent film) and the first is that it's written by David Twohy, whose name I have no idea how to pronounce and who is the first person I've dealt with in these blogs who could more accurately be described as a writer/director. Of course he did not direct The Fugitive, nor Waterworld, G. I. Jane or many of the other films he has written but he now seems to have settled into the dual role permanently and had directed his first film (Timescape) before writing The Fugitive. So I think it's fair to say that he was predominantly a writer and is now a writer/director. What interests me is that I only knew him as director of Pitch Black, I had no idea he wrote it and certainly no idea that he had written (co-written I should say with Jeb Stuart) The Fugitive. They say that all writers want to be directors (if only to get some credit) and I'm now wondering how many directors I like had whole other careers as writers which I know nothing about. I would love to find out that favourite directors of mine had written favourite films of mine without my knowledge. The other, slightly more lucid, reason I picked The Fugitive is because I think thriller writing is underrated. You very seldom see thriller writers picking up an Oscar or Writer's Guild award, that sort of thing tends to be reserved for worthy drama or indie self-exploration. I'm not saying that they are undeserving genres, I'm saying that I think there's no such thing as an undeserving genre; a well-written thriller, horror or sci-fi is as hard to write as a drama. In fact, I would say that it's harder; thrillers or action-adventure films have a hell of difficult job in keeping the audience guessing and on the edge of their seats, set pieces need to be thrilling but still fit into the plot, and that plot needs to be got across without slowing down the action. Drama of course needs to keep you interested but the audience is more understanding of a slow burn approach. People ask why the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels (haven't seen the new one yet) struggle to match the brilliance of the first; it's because it's bloody hard! Twohy has a hit and miss record (like most screenwriters), for every Fugitive there's a Waterworld, for every Pitch Black there's a Chronicles of Riddick, although he brought that one on himself. His screenplay for Alien 3 was apparently rejected (makes you wonder how bad it must have been!) and he is currently vaguely associated with the next Alien vs. Predator film, but despite this he is a talented writer of the thriller genre and I for one would like to see him return to pure screenwriting.