BEN BARNHART

Renowned for her quick wit and ability to undercut humor with potent messages, playwright Wendy Wasserstein '71 was true to form when she spoke on campus last Friday. Sitting behind a table at the front of Hooker Auditorium with moderator and MHC philosophy professor Thomas Wartenberg, a friend from her College days (he attended Amherst), she opened what would be an hour-long dialogue with a one-liner that drew peels of laughter. "All I can think of in this room is that this is the place where I got a D-minus in zoology," she deadpanned. "This the place where I identified the liver as the heart. The thought that I am speaking here is really cuckoo."

In setting the stage for the evening's discussion, Wartenberg noted that while most of us know about Wasserstein's "incredible career" as a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright who is known for her focus on the experience of women during the last decades of the twentieth century, the public is less familiar with her "other career" as a screenwriter. The conversation was framed by Wasserstein's initial remark that she "thinks of herself as a playwright, as a playwright who writes films." Throughout the night's discussion, she emphasized that she views and creates screenplays through this lens.

Wasserstein noted that in this regard, she is not atypical among literati who write movies. Alluding to "earlier times," she said that "playwrights who went to California," citing Lillian Hellman and Joseph Mankiewicz as examples, wrote films that were "much more verbal" than today's screenplays. Noted Wasserstein, "There's a part of me that thinks that I'm not such a good screenwriter because I am much more interested in character than I am in action. Film is a medium in which you have to make characters move. When I started writing screenplays,
I became a much better playwright because screenwriting made my playwrighting sharper. Playwrighting has hindered me as a screenwriter."

Wasserstein noted that most screenplays are "predictable" because "development people" at movie studios want them to be formulaic. "There are all these classes that teach you how to write screenplays," she said. "They break down Casablanca and show that all movies are either the Wizard of Oz or Casablanca. They tell you that all movies have a three-act structure and that you have to bring the subsidiary characters in on the tenth page." Interesting screenplays break these rules, according to Wasserstein. "If you follow the rules, you lose the voice of the author and have the voice of the silly development people who read Ed-whatever-his-name's book on screenplay writing."

To illustrate the distinctive nature of a screenplay written by a playwright, how a novel is adapted for the screen, and how techniques of the theater can be brought into movies, extensive discussion focused on The Object of My Affection, a 1998 film for which Wasserstein adapted a novel by Steven McCauley. It was directed by Nicholas Hytner, a friend of the playwright's and "a theater director who directs movies," Wasserstein said approvingly. Initial conversation focused on the long and convoluted journey of how the film was made. Wasserstein began adapting McCauley's book in 1987 and it took more than a decade of back and forth between different studios and fifteen rewrites before the film was made. "Most playwrights don't just write plays. They have to do other things because you can't live on plays," said Wasserstein, who joked about the process. "I have written a lot of movies. Many have not been made. I look at this [situation] as a grant to continue writing. I think to myself that I got a Paramount to continue writing or a Fox to continue writing. The Object of My Affection was the longest grant I ever had."

Wasserstein also discussed the ways she balanced her creative needs while writing the screenplay for the film with the desires of studio executives. In the final evaluation, she noted, "I wanted the relationship [of the main characters] to have a wistful quality, because these kinds of relationships are fuzzy. The studio wanted more clarity. They were not interested in a wistful quality. They wanted the three acts with the subsidiary characters brought in on page ten. To make them and me happy at same time, I split the difference." She acknowledged that the film was as good as it is because of Hytner's theatrical orientation and the range of input he allowed her.

Following the discussion of the film and the showing of a clip from it, Wartenberg opened the floor to questions. Student inquiries ranged from whether film or plays offered better opportunities for representing reality (a broad and complex question, according to Wasserstein, who launched into a conversation about the nature of reality) to how much involvement Wasserstein has in the production of a film or movie she has written (a great deal in her plays, not very much when it comes to films). At the end of the discussion, President Joanne Creighton thanked the playwright for giving her time and presented her with several gifts from the College. "Do you still have elves here?," Wasserstein quipped in response.

Following the discussion, Wasserstein signed copies of Shiksa Goddess (or, How I Spent My Forties), her new book of essays, and chatted with students, many of whom asked for advice about how to pursue a career in the theater or film industries. When the applause died down, the last question was answered, and the final book was signed, the house lights dimmed, and Wasserstein exited Hooker, stage left.