Do These Writers Deserve As Much Praise As They Get? examines how screenwriting talent clashes with directors’ visions—Aaron Sorkin’s polarizing left-wing framing in A Few Good Men and The Social Network, William Goldman’s uncredited brilliance (Princess Bride), and Joseph Mankiewicz’s flawless All About Eve. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue shines in Reservoir Dogs but falters in Pulp Fiction, while Billy Wilder (Sunset Boulevard) and David Mamet (The Untouchables) prove timeless. The Coens (Fargo) and Preston Sturges (Sullivan’s Travels) face mixed legacies, and Dalton Trumbo’s communist ties overshadow his Oscar-winning scripts like Roman Holiday. Ultimately, greatness hinges on execution: even the best writers need strong directors to elevate their work. [Automatically generated summary]
All right, today we are going to take a look at some of the highly rated screenwriters and ask ourselves, are they overrated, underrated, or truly great?
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Now, this is a kind of interesting question for me.
I've done some screenwriting in my time, and one of the things I can tell you is when they say Writers, screenwriters always get angry when they say that film is a director's medium, it is a director's medium.
There's no question about it.
It is a director's medium.
If you take a movie seven, if you listen to the screenplay of that movie, it's terrible.
It's an adolescent, silly screenplay.
The direction is so great that the movie is wonderful.
The movie is really terrific to watch.
So I'm rating these guys on the basis of the movies that were produced of their screenplays.
But I really do believe that the directors had a lot to do with the quality of the movie.
All right, so we'll start with Aaron Sorkin, did A Few Good Men, The Social Network, Social Network Part 2.
Aaron Sorkin is an extremely talented writer, but I find him shallow.
And I find that the stuff he says, like A Few Good Men, really entertaining movie, really liked it.
But obviously, the reason Jack Nicholson saying, you can't handle the truth, the reason that became a meme is because he's the hero of the movie.
But because Sorkin is a shallow left-winger, he makes him the villain of the movie.
And I noticed that.
I saw a few good men on stage before Sorkin was famous, and I thought, wow, the guy can really write, but he's very shallow.
I thought the same thing on the social network.
But again, I find him entertaining.
So he's overrated and the people think he's truly great.
But yeah, he's good.
He's talented.
William Goldman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Marathon Man, Princess Bride, very, very talented writer, and also the hidden hand behind a lot of movies.
He did a lot of doctoring, including A Few Good Men, I believe, and he didn't get a lot of credit for it.
Really, really talented.
Also wrote very good novels before he realized there was much more money in screenwriting.
I got to give him a truly great simply because of his presence in the world.
Butch Cassie and the Sundance Kid, probably close to a great movie.
Marathon Man, a really good thriller.
Princess Bride, iconic.
People love it.
I don't know if it's a great film, but it certainly is something delightful to watch.
So William Goldman, we'll put him up there with the great, his book about the movie business, Adventures in the Skin Trade, is one of the great books on Hollywood.
Quentin Tarantino, also director, pulp fiction, Django and Chained, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Jackie Brown.
Quentin Tarantino is a terrific writer.
I'm going to say he is a truly great screenwriter.
His dialogue is absolutely terrific.
Most of his films, I really liked the first one.
Reservoir Dogs, really liked Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
The rest of his movies, I always feel are, you know, I think pulp fiction is really overrated.
I don't think pulp fiction is a great movie at all, but he is a really, just judging him as a writer, he's a really good writer.
His dialogue is just great.
Woody Allen, another guy, see, I'm not a big Woody Allen fan, but I have to say he's a truly great writer-director.
And the reason I say that is because his true great creation is Woody Allen, the character of Woody Allen.
It's as iconic and memorable as Charlie Chaplin's Little Tramp.
I don't like the character because he actually kind of elevates this really small-minded New York intellectual crowd that he thinks he's not a part of, but he is.
But still, it's amazing how many times his ideas have been used again in other movies.
And I just think he's just tremendously creative and his movies do form a body of work that will be remembered in American film.
So I have to call him truly great.
Nora Ephraim, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, a good writer.
I don't know what he's underrated, overrated, or truly great.
Is she a great writer?
One of the Greats00:06:09
Ah, gosh.
Some people just love her.
I think she's good.
I think she's a good writer.
I'll just leave it at that.
Joseph Mankovitz wrote All About Eve.
That's all you have to know.
Probably the perfect screenplay.
All about Eve may be the perfect screenplay.
I was called at one point to write a remake of it, and I said, No, there's nothing to remake.
And they said, But Jane Fonda's going to do it.
I said, No, she's not.
It'll never be remade.
It's like gone with the wind.
It's just perfect.
Casablanca, you can try to remake it, but it'll just be bad.
I don't want anything to do with it.
So Joseph Mankovic gets just for all about Eve.
Letter of the Three Wives, also great.
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All right, Charlie Kaufman, adaptation, Eternal Sunshine, and the Spotless Mind, Bean John Malkovich.
Another really good writer, really entertaining, really different, really smart.
I can't call him one of the greats.
I would not call him one of the greats.
But he is a really good writer.
And, you know, to say somebody's not one of the greats, I'm very hard with that word.
You know, it's like they're very few great anything.
And I say that being one of them, so I know what I'm talking about.
Charlie Kaufman, very good writer, and I like his movies a lot.
I'm really entertained by them.
Robert Town, Chinatown, The Last Detail.
Chinatown is a great movie.
So I'll put him up there.
You know, I think he's one of the greats.
The Last Detail is really good.
Those are the only movies that we remember him for.
It's funny in Hollywood, especially in modern Hollywood.
People only write a few good movies and then they're gone.
Chinatown is really the only one I can see that's that's a great movie.
Listen, how many people write a great movie?
He wrote Chinatown's a great movie.
Robert Benton, Kramer vs. Kramer, Bonnie and Clyde.
Yeah, I got to put them up there.
Those are movies that actually, in their day, they actually were kind of tentpole movies, you know, movies that everything else swirled around.
I'll say he's one of the greats.
Patty Chaevsky, Network, Marty.
Geez.
Patty Chaevsky had this contract where nobody could ever change his words.
So his movies got incredibly long-winded and just they just went on and on, people explaining things to you.
Marty, great film.
Network, great film.
Hospital, really good film with George C. Scott.
Yeah, he's one of the greats.
There's no question about it.
Eric Roth, Killers of the Flower Moon, Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
He's a long writer.
He writes long, long, long things.
Very long.
I would say he's not over long or under long.
I would just say he's long.
He writes, this stuff he writes goes on and on and on forever.
Killers of the Flower Moon should have been a 90-minute movie.
Curious Case of Benjamin Button, I thought was okay.
It's like, he's overrated.
If anybody's calling him great, he's overrated.
Alexander Payne, Sideways Election, The Descendants, again, good stuff.
I really like him.
You know, and I don't want to take anything away from him, but those are all good movies.
But are they great movies?
No, they're not.
David Mammet, yes, first of all, he's a great writer because his plays are great.
He's written a couple of really great plays, among them Glengarry Glenn Ross, which was also a terrific movie.
The Untouchables is a classic movie.
David Mammet's a great writer, and he really is one of the top writers.
The Untouchables is terrific.
The verdict is terrific.
Glengarry Glenn Ross is a great adaptation of a great play.
Yep, one of the greats.
Billy Wilder, no one can touch him.
Just so great.
Some like it, Hot The Apartment.
Wilder also collaborated with Raymond Chandler on Double Indemnity.
And he directed Sunset Boulevard.
If he had only done Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, two of the greatest films ever made, Billy Wilder is the king of screenwriters.
I mean, he is just absolutely terrific.
Preston Sturgis, Sullivan's Travels, The Lady Eve.
I've always thought he was a little overrated, but I really enjoy him.
You know, I really enjoy his films, and they are well remembered, but they don't hold up as well as you'd think they do.
But, you know, he's a name to reckon with.
Very, very good writer.
Joel Cohen and Ethan Cohen.
Yeah, I got to say, Fargo, Hail Caesar, No Country for Old Men, and Blood Simple.
Yeah, they're great.
They're absolutely great.
Dalton Trumbeau, one of the worst people who ever lived in Hollywood, a massive communist, wrote Roman Holiday Spartacus.
Great writer.
Just goes to show you that people like me, who are both great writers and really terrific people, we're the exception.
Dalton Trumbeau, I think, is the norm.
Roman Holiday and Spartacus was just a great writer who sucked.
All right, I gotta stop there.
Very hard to judge screenwriters because, as I say, so much of the quality of a movie comes from the director.
It is true that a great screenplay and a great director, when they come together like Sunset Boulevard and Double Indemnity, you know, nothing can match that.
Just unbelievably great, great.
So the writer can be incredibly important, but the director is the main guy.