“If the British monarchy is good for nothing else, it’s superb at producing the subjects of films.”
Roger Ebert
“I wrote a first draft of the screenplay (The King’s Speech) , which I wasn’t quite sure about. So I showed it to my then-wife and writing partner, and she said, ‘Look, there’s some very nice stuff in here, David, but you’re being seduced by cinematic technique. Why don’t you just, as an exercise, write it out as a stage play because the physical confines of the stage will force you to focus on your key relationships?’ As you’ve seen, The King’s Speech really is, after all, two men in a room. And if you get that tentpole upright, you can then hang everything off of it like Christmas tree ornaments. She’s a smart woman, so I took her advice and wrote it as a play and kind of realized, I think I may have finally done this correctly.”
Screenwriter David Seidler
Interview with Sean O’Connell
The King’s Speech has been nominated for 12 Academy Awards.
[…] “I wrote a first draft of the screenplay (The King’s Speech) , which I wasn’t quite sure about. So I showed it to my then-wife and writing partner, and she said, ‘Look, there’s some very nice stuff in here, David, but you’re being seduced by cinematic technique. Why don’t you just, as an exercise, write it out […] Original Source… […]
Thanks for sharing this bit about the creation of David Seidler’s screenplay.
It reminds me of how some of the most surprising and effective bits of creativity come from within constraints.
The notion of the limits of a stage play’s “physical confines” focused Seidler on exactly what made the story work.
This is just a first blush, I’m going to be thinking about this post and the quote you supply for a while now.
Thanks for stirring things up!
Keep creating…it’s more fun that way,
Mike
Thanks Mike— I’ve always been fond of the expression, “Embrace your limitations.”
Dirty Harry taught me that!
Maybe it was in the sequel: “a man’s got to know his limitations.”