The Irishman: A Crushing Disappointment

[Ron Ecker]

28 minutes ago, James DiEugenio said:

I wouldn't quite say that Ron.

Its not until the film progresses further that that aspect comes out.

 

Right, it came out later. Lawrence said it. Which is the only earthly reason I would assume it. He seemed immensely to enjoy a massacre later. But I doubt that this came from Lawrence's book, and I've always questioned why this was thrown into the characterization. I think it would have been more understandable if he had said that he enjoyed the time he had to spend with Jose Ferrer. (More true to Lawrence's life?)

 

 

[James DiEugenio]

I have never been certain about this point. But I think its accurate.

If you recall, near the end, right before he is dismissed by Hawkins, doesn't a British hospital administrator come out to see him trying, in his Arab garb, to get water out of a tap that does not work?  And he slaps him for laughing at the failure.

Is that not the same guy who shakes his hand, like three minutes later, while in uniform as he leaves the building after being released?

And is he not the same guy who, at the beginning of the film, objects to Arthur Kennedy's disparaging remarks about Lawrence at his memorial service?

[Ron Ecker]

Yes, as I recall the guy who slaps him for laughing is the same guy who wants to shake his hand later. I don't know about the guy at the beginning. But I guess the message is clear: You can't judge a book by its cover. (Or a rather weird British officer by his Arab garb.)

 

 

[David Andrews]

3 hours ago, Ron Ecker said:

Right, it came out later. Lawrence said it. Which is the only earthly reason I would assume it. He seemed immensely to enjoy a massacre later. But I doubt that this came from Lawrence's book, and I've always questioned why this was thrown into the characterization. I think it would have been more understandable if he had said that he enjoyed the time he had to spend with Jose Ferrer. (More true to Lawrence's life?)

 

 

Lawrence says it to Allenby  in the film after he's made it to Allenby's headquarters with his boy servant.  It's after the capture of Aqaba, and just ahead of the Intermission.

Edited February 11, 2020 by David Andrews

[David Andrews]

2 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

I have never been certain about this point. But I think its accurate.

If you recall, near the end, right before he is dismissed by Hawkins, doesn't a British hospital administrator come out to see him trying, in his Arab garb, to get water out of a tap that does not work?  And he slaps him for laughing at the failure.

Is that not the same guy who shakes his hand, like three minutes later, while in uniform as he leaves the building after being released?

And is he not the same guy who, at the beginning of the film, objects to Arthur Kennedy's disparaging remarks about Lawrence at his memorial service?

Yes, yes and yes,

[Ron Ecker]

I can't mention "Lawrence of Arabia" without paying tribute to the French composer Maurice Jarre, winner of three Academy Awards and four Golden Globes. He wrote the score for "Lawrence" and "Dr. Zhivago" (the unforgettable "Lara's Theme") among others. Born in Lyon, died in Malibu. Film music composers don't die in Lyon.

 

 

 

[Douglas Caddy]

https://www.aol.com/article/news/2020/02/15/jimmy-hoffa-associate-who-was-suspect-in-disappearance-dies/23927505/

[Joseph McBride]

The blacklisted writer Michael Wilson wrote the first version of LAWRENCE OF ARABIA,

but David Lean nixed it and brought in Robert Bolt to rewrite it. Only Bolt's name

appeared in the credits at the time. But the British writers' guild gave both men

awards for writing the film. Eventually the Writers Guild of America restored Wilson's credit, but only

after objections by Lean. Wilson thought that the Bolt-Lean version downplayed

the complex politics of the story in favor of exploring Lawrence's sexual conflicts.

I have always thought the film, impressive as it is visually and in O'Toole's acting, is 

incoherent and obscure historically. I wrote about this in my profile of Wilson for the WGA

magazine Written By. That article, "'A Very Good American': The Undaunted Artistry

of Blacklisted Screenwriter Michael Wilson," is on my website josephmcbridefilm.com

and in my collection TWO CHEERS FOR HOLLYWOOD: JOSEPH McBRIDE ON MOVIES.

I realized after writing my biography FRANK CAPRA: THE CATASTROPHE OF SUCCESS

that Wilson is the hero of that book and of Capra's life. Capra informed on Wilson even

though he did the final polish on IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE and wrote a screenplay of THE

FRIENDLY PERSUASION (based on stories by Richard Nixon's Quaker relative Jessamyn West) that Capra dropped because it was a pacifist script, and the Korean

War was on, etc. William Wyler made it as FRIENDLY PERSUASION and had his brother

rewrite it to make the pacifist a killer and had the film released with no writing credit.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[James DiEugenio]

I have read the correspondence by Wilson about this dispute.

I think its pretty clear that it should have been a co writing credit from the first release of the film.  Wilson states that his draft contained what was essentially the plot outline that was followed in the film.

Lean wanted the final script to be more of a character study.  Those are the instructions he gave Bolt.  Bolt did that plus most of the dialogue.  Wilson surely should have been given a co writing credit.  

Edited February 17, 2020 by James DiEugenio

[David Andrews]

I'd like to read the Wilson draft and gauge how much more of a political film it might have been.  Is the draft available online?

The Lean film plays like psychobiography contained within an adventure story with fantastic characters.  The latter aspect is evident in the types of film Lawrence most influenced: Raiders of the Lost Ark and other Spielberg; various films in the Star Wars series; Ridley Scott's Prometheus; and other shades of these types.

I suspect that the aphoristic style of the dialogue is the Robert Bolt we hear in Doctor Zhivago, but it would be interesting to see which lines originated with Wilson.  I still regard Lawrence as a political film (especially in comparison with Zhivago and Bridge on the River Kwai), and the aphorisms are part of what keeps it rooted in the political, despite the adventurist flourishes, and the historical compressions, omissions, and fictionalizations.

Edited February 16, 2020 by David Andrews

[Joseph McBride]

The draft is not available online.

Edited February 17, 2020 by Joseph McBride

[David Andrews]

Joseph, quoting, if I may, from your Michael Wilson article:

Wilson said in a 1964 interview, "The film was at the point of

being shot when I found myself again in conflict with David

Lean over questions of the film's themes and the nature of

the character. We had arrived at an impasse and I

withdrew... My version of Lawrence's character was more

social and political than that of Robert Bolt, who preferred

the psychoanalytical side--the sadistic, masochistic,

homosexual aspects of his character."

After receiving a copy of Bolt's screenplay just over a month

before the film's premiere, Wilson wrote Spiegel on

November 7, 1962: "It is clear at once that little of my dialog

[sic] remains in this screenplay, certainly less than 10

percent. I assume that the dialog was written by Robert Bolt,

and through you I must congratulate him on a job well done.

He is a gifted man. If screen credit were determined on the

basis of dialog alone, I could not claim recognition for this

picture.

"However, more goes into the writing of a motion picture

than the spoken word. Structure, selection, continuity, plot,

invention, and characterization--all these factors form and

define the final product we see and hear... Why, then, is the

screenplay attributed to Mr. Bolt so much like mine, to a

degree that it virtually coincides with mine in terms of

continuity? The story that Robert Bolt tells is the story that I

told. He has chosen different words with which to tell it."

I don't doubt (I never did) that Wilson deserves co-writing credit on Lawrence, but his assumption of creating the film's structure seems to attribute to him the condensations and fictionalizations that would trouble Jim Di Eugenio into calling Lawrence's politics only window dressing, and might prompt me into calling out the film's figures of the Arab Revolt as mere steps in the sand away from the caricatures of 1959's Ben-Hur (adapted from the desert exoticist Lew Wallace by Gore Vidal, among others).  We'll never know, so long as the draft remains an archival item.

Also - here sounding like a period letter writer to the London Sunday Times - I'll mention that it was El Aurens himself that brought the homoerotic aspects of his psychology to the fore, endlessly weeping in print and to "confidential friends" that, with a groan of "delicious warmth," he gave his "precious bodily integrity" up to the Turkish Bey, in a scene that, however much it later galvanized a generation of Saturday-matinee American schoolboys (Steven Spielberg among them), probably masks Lawrence having confronted his sexuality amid consensuality in a land where rough desire, like murder, lay just to the other side of good manners and voluminous robes.  I don't blame Robert Bolt for running with it and afflicting that generation, as Lawrence certainly ran with it first, and flamboyantly, as if in his first Arab costume.

Still, Jim, it's a political film.  Without the Arab Revolt, it's just the tale of a repressed future Oxford don gone troppo on an extended holiday.  It's possible that the major sin here lies in not foreshadowing well enough how Lawrence would be impressed into betraying the Arab nationalist agenda at Versailles, a process that perhaps inspired Lawrence's later desires for anonymity, hermitage, and self-punishment.

Edited February 17, 2020 by David Andrews

[James DiEugenio]

1.) Bolt gave Lean what he wanted.  A fascinating,  in depth character study of a complex man, all staged in the midst of British backing for the Arab revolt to defeat the Ottoman Empire.

2.) How anyone can compare Lean's film to Raiders of the Lost Ark utterly confounds me. And from what Joe has written about Spielberg, I am sure he would giggle at it.  In my opinion, the Bolt/Wilson script of this film is one of the most distinguished pieces of screenwriting ever.  Bolt's dialogue and the Bolt/Wilson characterizations are rocket miles ahead of anything Kasdan has ever written.  There are dialogue exchanges in this film that should be studied in film writing class: 

Guiness: We are both glad to be rid of him. (Referring to Lawrence.)

Hawkins: And I thought I was a hard man.

Guiness: You are merely a general, I must be a king. 

And that is just a few seconds in what I believe to be one of the finest, most memorable ending sequences ever filmed.  The first time I saw the film, I did not really understand it.  I was too young.  It was only on about the third go round that I really comprehended what Bolt and Lean were up to, and it was through my understanding of the way that last sequence is directed that I really got it. And that masterly direction goes from beginning with Lawrence's reflection on the table,  all the way down to that smudged windshield of that dirty army jeep, with the motorcycle passing Lawrence and his driver. Lean never lost track of what he thought the film should be about.

When you can balance the big, epic scenes with character tracking and  directorial subtlety like that, then you have  a marvel of a  film.  And David, do you really think Harrison Ford was the equivalent of O'toole at his absolute finest?

 

[David Andrews]

Edited for Clarity

Jim - it was only a few posts above that you said Lawrence was not a political film, and called the political elements window dressing, while I defended them, and am defending them here.

My point is, if the scene structure is a Michael Wilson creation, then Wilson is responsible for reducing the politics to a level where they could be accused of being window dressing.  It may in fact be the 90% of new dialogue Wilson attributes to Robert Bolt that defines the political atmosphere of Lawrence, despite its reduction for dramatic purposes.  If Lean and Bolt also chose to emphasize the edgiest part of Lawrence's psychology, they were following Lawrence's lead in Seven Pillars, and the gossip about Lawrence that emerged from his anonymous service in the RAF after the war.  Thanks to the Lean film. reconsiderations of Lawrence's autobiography and its psycho-sexual elements began to be published by the mid-1970s.

As far as Raiders of the Lost Ark goes, I merely mentioned that Lawrence is an influence on the adventure directors of that generation, including the Lucas of Star Wars (wherein Howard Hawks is also bountifully referenced), and the Spielberg of not only Raiders, but of Empire of the Sun as well.  And in both the Raiders series and the second Star Wars trilogy are exotic "foreign" caricatures that owe as much to Anthony Quinn in Lawrence (not to mention the characters Da'ud and Farraj) as they do to the heavily-accented stereotypes of 1930s-1940s movie serials.  They come off a bit like the Arab characters in Ben-Hur of the year before.  Old habits die hard.

The Spielberg wisdom has been kicking around Turner Classic Movies for years; I'm hardly reinventing the wheel.  He alludes to the stereotyping of Arabs in the first clip.

 

Edited February 17, 2020 by David Andrews

[Pat Speer]

I worked in the record industry for a number of years, and decided to write a screenplay about my experiences after I left. But I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I studied the craft of screenwriting for a year--watching a video series and reading a number of books on the subject, but mostly studying bootleg copies of actual shooting scripts which at the time could be purchased from book stores in Burbank and Hollywood, and watching every film nominated for best screenplay from 1970-2000. 

In any event, I picked up a lot of stuff about screenwriting in the process. And one of the things I remember quite clearly is that in the early days of Hollywood, producers would often dole out screenwriting credits as a favor, or pressure writers to work for little pay in exchange for a screenwriting credit, and that this led to a backlash, whereby the screenwriter's guild passed a rule stating that screenwriting credit could not be shared by more than one screenwriter, unless the writers were a writing team. 

So, I'm pretty sure Wilson and Bolt could not share credit for Lawrence of Arabia, even if they wanted to. I think it's safe to say, moreover, that Bolt only agreed to work on the film if he got full credit, and that this led him to re-write so much of the dialogue. If he hadn't done so, and the bulk of the dialogue remained Wilson's, Wilson could have brought a case against the film, and the guild could have forced the studio to give Wilson sole credit. 

And yeah, I know some films list multiple writers within the credits, but look again. They will list a number of names for story by, or developed for the screen by, etc, but the written by or screenplay by credits are almost always for one person, even though multiple writers often work on a film. In fact, one of the highest paid jobs in Hollywood is script doctor--the screen writer brought in at the last minute to add some spicy dialogue or jokes, or re-think the main character's big speech, etc. These guys make serious money...but receive no official credit. It's kinda like Fight Club...the first rule of being a script doctor is to not let the public know you're the script doctor. 

The existence of script doctors, moreover, helps explain one of filmdom's mysteries--why so many hot young screenwriters disappear after a couple of successes. It's because their well-received screenplays were actually spiced-up and salvaged by writers such as William Goldman, Quentin Tarantino, and Spike Lee. 

Of course, in the studio days, the studios had a stable of writers who could be brought onto a project at the drop of a hat, and add a few pieces here and there. As Joe can attest, there are dozens of scripts to which the likes of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dorothy Parker, and William Faulkner contributed, where their contributions have never been officially acknowledged, or where the scripts remain  locked in a vault, un-produced.   

That's how I remember it, anyhow.