Not for public consumption

He reminded me why I want to be a writer.

One of the interesting things he talked about was his image of the process of creating a film script. Firstly he gathers a large block of material, and, like a sculptor visualises the possibilities of the film’s shape and structure and story. The story is carved out of this block of material. Next, layers of new meaning (not present in the original draft) are added to the work, like an oil painting. Lastly the script should be worked like a poem, pared down so that the work takes on the most layers of meaning with the least amount of words. The ‘finished’ script, he said, should resemble the exposed part of an iceberg. The words, the surface, should point to deep depths of meaning and to the core of the story.

He talked a little about the difference between writing for the theatre and writing for the screen, how plays are organically informed by the rehearsal of actors before the work is staged, and how film scripts are expected to be finished before shooting begins.

He talked a little of the forward momentum of time that is present in most films, which (to him) makes movies a little rigid, where theatre is more flexible with time and geography; “it is no slave to forward momentum”. He also talked a bit about starting with key images, which clarifies the work, and the importance of having complementary images, or recurring images which point to the obsessions in the story.

When asked about the theme of infidelity which surfaces in a lot of his work, Bovell talked about his interest in the way people break trust; which could be between husband and wife, but could also be between other family members, too. He is drawn to, and finds drama in characters who cannot express themselves emotionally through words. He wants to “capture that struggle through language.”

He felt that writing got harder with age: in his youth he thought he had thousands of stories to tell, but now he thinks he has perhaps ten worth telling. He thought that one of the challenges for him was to stop censoring himself and to have the courage to write without inhibition from himself.

It’s a relief that a writer of his calibre struggles the same way I do.