“To make a film is easy; to make a good film is war. To make a very good film is a miracle.” Alejandro González Iñárritu
These are the kind of terms that the film business perceives itself in. Very much larger than life. And self-mythologising to an extraordinary level. Grandiose. The film industry, everywhere in the world, not just in the US, has an assured, some might argue inflated, sense of its own self-importance. And from time to time it needs a reality check.
Over the years, as a film producer with over 100 feature film credits under my belt and as member of the board and Chairman of the European Film Academy for the last 20 years, as well as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts – I am often asked to give keynote lectures, public addresses, masterclasses etc and very often I choose the occasionally controversial piece. One of these I wrote for a particularly self-satisfied gathering of film makers a couple of years ago, it was called: Why do We Make Movies? Do They Matter? It opened something like this:
“In the time that it took me to walk from over there to over here, 15 children died in sub-Saharan Africa of AIDS related illnesses, 30 died of hunger, I’m not sure how many died of malaria or of tuberculosis. It’s OK. I’m not going to ask you for money. I haven’t said these things to be sanctimonious. To make us all feel guilty for being here. In this fabulous place. Quite well fed. I say them simply to remind ourselves of who we are and what we do. We work in the film industry, or we have ambitions to work in the film business. BUT the reason I mention these statistics is that throughout our professional careers – throughout your professional careers if you come away from this discourse with only one thing that sticks in your mind remember this: IT’S ONLY THE F***ING FILM INDUSTRY – IT’S ONLY A F***ING FILM FESTIVAL. We haven’t found a cure for cancer or tuberculosis. We haven’t stopped the destruction of the rain forest. We’re not frontline doctors for Médecins Sans Frontières dealing with the results of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. We haven’t found the answer to the incredible inequalities between the haves and have nots in Latin America and South-East Asia.”
But the great Mexican director Iñárritu was on to something when he compared making a film to going to war. The process, and the discipline involved, is very military, very ordered, and organised, highly disciplined – indeed being part of making a film is a bit like being in the army.
Aside from the absolute precision and discipline required to shoot a film from all departments, the co-ordination of the various cohorts, location shoots are particularly comparable because they resemble military tours of duty requiring all members of the troupe to be separated from family for extended periods of time on a schedule that is brutal, just absolutely brutal and very often in inhuman conditions with working hours that are virtually impossible to survive.
The fundamental difference between making a film and writing a book is control. The producer/director always thinks they are in control of a movie. But making movies is a relentless series of choices and accidents. It’s a lottery which requires and endless amount of collaboration and compromise with dozens of specialists all defending their turf and believing their wisdom is greater than the wisdom of the creative from the department next door. It’s probably the most infuriating of ways to create a work of art. I call it the gesamtkunstwerk factor. And its perhaps why film productions are run like military operations – everyone is trying to exert their small bit of control.
With the novel, however, it’s me who is in control. Unequivocally. Not the money. Not the demanding leading actor. Not the needy director. The passive aggressive accountant. The bolshy First AD. The aggressive-aggressive studio or streamer. In the movies everyone thinks they have control, but in reality, no-one does. Even final cut can’t be defined as total control. With the novel, only one person has control. The writer. The fictioneer.
There seems to be a trend at the moment for film makers to move sideways into writing novels, Herzog, Cronenberg, Tarantino, Brian de Palma, Michael Mann, Charlie Kaufman and given the demands being put on contemporary filmmakers it doesn’t surprise me.
During the waiting period anticipating the start of writing my debut novel Istria Gold, I was already kind of de-mob happy. I could see freedom on the horizon. When I got started in earnest, I felt as if I had been honourably discharged from my unit and now, I was in civvy street, I could do anything I wanted. It’s a heady drug – to write whatever I wanted, to think as wildly as I desired, to dream – and I can see why others in the film industry would want a taste. Compared to film, the novel provides a vast array of narrative possibilities and unique creative freedoms that are totally anathema to the process of film making. Now, I could make a multi-million budget movie with a micro-film budget. The only difference was that it was all taking place inside my head and between me and the blank page.
Several months into the process, you wonder if whatever it was that was the driver to labour so intensively has a limited chance of impact. Suddenly, the writer knows the heavy burden of complete control and of bearing that responsibility alone.
Screenplays are essentially flawed pieces of writing because they are written to press the buttons of a wide range of people. Money talks in the film industry. Costs and profits are crucial. The sheer cost of the process of turning money into light at the movies makes it a pre-requisite to please as many of the people as much of the time as possible. So for me as a producer-turned-novelist it is of quite significant appeal to move from being an ensemble player to become essentially a soloist. The only opinions to consider are your own. The only music sheet is self-generated. The economics of writing a novel mean that you can write for who you damn well want, when you damn well want, how you damn well want. The only crucial aspect is that it should at least be good enough to find a publisher, and therefore a public.
There is nothing new under the sun, as the Presocratic philosophers and the book of Ecclesiastes demonstrate so clearly – and many great film makers of the 20th century embarked on this very path when frustrated by the film making process, they range from Elia Kazan (Blackballed as opposed to Blacklisted) to Erich von Stroheim (fired/ostracized by Thalberg) to Michael Cimino (hounded out of Hollywood). The difference these days seems to be that it is a matter of artistic choice in this new wave that is the case of the Tarantino’s, the Herzog’s, the Cronenberg’s, and indeed the Downey’s.
Films don’t belong to anybody. Anybody except the collective. Novels belong to the author, and the author alone. And it is in this that this complete sense of fulfilment lies. As Charles Bukowski once said:
“The crowd is the gathering place of the weakest; true creation is a solitary act.”
The novel is yours and yours alone.
(c) Mike Downey
About Istria Gold by Mike Downey:
From award-winning filmmaker and producer Mike Downey comes an ambitious and atmospheric historical thriller debut, the first in a trilogy starring Marco Mihailić. Set on Croatia’s Istrian peninsula, ISTRIA GOLD explores the turbulent region’s history, culture, and traditions, bringing it to life in the grand tradition of authors such as Martin Walker and his Bruno Courrèges series.
Order your copy online here.
