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July General Meeting
Writer-Director Joan Tewkesbury
Urges Writers to "Fly"
by Lance Thompson
(July 2002) |
An award-winning writer and director who began as a choreographer, Joan Tewkesbury shared some of the elegant steps required to keep a Hollywood career on its feet during her July 13 visit with the Scriptwriters Network. She attributes the longevity of her career to "showing up where I was least expected."
Born in Redlands, California, Ms. Tewkesbury received conflicting parental advice on her career. Her father, who repaired typewriters and adding machines for the Board of Education, encouraged young Joan to learn to type and set her career sights on secretarial work. But her mother, a nurse, aimed her daughter toward the stage, enrolling her in an El Monte dance school where the curriculum included ballet, tap, acrobatics and personality. She appeared in her first film at age 10. The Unfinished Dance was directed by Henry Koster, with a cast that included Cyd Charisse and Danny Thomas. In New York, she performed as an ostrich, an Indian, and Mary Martin's flying understudy in Peter Pan under the direction of Jerome Robbins.
Tewkesbury, married with two children, participated in the USC Festival Theater at the Edinburgh Festival writing, directing and performing plays on street corners. "Hey, it was the 60's," Tewkesbury explains. Back in Los Angeles, Michael Murphy invited director Robert Altman to see him in a performance that she directed, leading to the first meeting of Tewkesbury and her most influential collaborator. "You run into ensembles of people who feed your enthusiasm," Tewkesbury says. Having seen Altman's film M*A*S*H, she felt a kinship with the director who, like her, enjoyed "corralling random behavior to build a story. Film is like dance," Tewkesbury explains. "It's done in increments of time, space and sound. You find how things move organically."
Her meeting with Altman led to a job as script supervisor on McCabe and Mrs. Miller. "I'm pretty organized, but I learned on the job," Tewkesbury admits. The film shot from September to January, but Tewkesbury stayed on for two and a half months to type and collate script notes on thousands of feet of film. Working with Altman, Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, Tewkesbury learned the movie business by immersion. "It was my film school," she says.
Tewkesbury discovered that her style of storytelling meshed easily with Altman's. "My process is like a vacuum cleaner-I sweep the whole room, gather everything, then find the beginning, middle and end. For me, a story is driven by character and emotion. I'm not linear." While Altman's enthusiasm for improvisation on the set frustrated other writers, it delighted Tewkesbury. "I'm not insistent on finishing the film on paper-it can take all the life and spontaneity out of it."
Her association with Altman continued, and in 1970, when Time ran a cover featuring country Western music, Altman suggested collaboration on a film about the subject and Tewkesbury traveled to the heart of the story. "Nashville reminded me of Hollywood in the old days, everybody was trying to be famous." Immersing herself in the culture driven by the Bible Industry, uppers and creators of country music, Tewkesbury absorbed the rhythms of her subject. The result was Nashville, the script for which earned Tewkesbury a British Academy Award nomination and the Los Angeles Critics' Award.
After her screenwriting success, Tewkesbury wanted to direct. Altman advised her she'd have the best chance if she developed her own material. Unable to get it up and running, she directed Paul Schraeder's Old Boyfriends, starring John Belushi and Talia Shire, which disappointed some audiences expecting more Animal House antics, but was entered into Director's Fortnight at the Cannes Film Festival. Again, she approaches directing from the choreographer's perspective. "Directing is like staging dance. You find the rhythms of how the characters, the story and the camera move through the space." She also enjoys the process of discovery that happens during production. "While directing, new stuff comes up all the time-from the weather, the actors, the location. Great stuff happens for me. A director must keep an open mind."
Impatient with the long development time of features, Tewkesbury continued to work on stage and in television. "The best movies are on television. Not just HBO and Showtime, but the networks too. Good series television is wonderful-24, The Guardian, The West Wing, The Sopranos-long form stories. Directing for television is like going to different people's homes for dinner-you get to sample your favorites. It goes fast, so you can try lots of stuff before they say 'don't.'" Tewkesbury's directing "stuff" has contributed to the success of television series such as Felicity and The Guardian, as well as the critically-acclaimed TNT film Cold Sassy Tree starring Faye Dunaway.
"As a choreographer, I was loud, yelling at people, 'Get off the floor, fly!'" I have the same advice for writers-get out from behind the computer, lift off. Be balanced. Don't let work become your life, or you will have no life to draw from. Travel to places no one else goes and let us discover something new from you, through you."
Tewkesbury most recent idea for a television pilot occurred when she attended her son's wedding and eavesdropped on incongruous patrons and the seen-it-all staff of an upscale New York restaurant. "A writer is a thief, stealing time, secrets, things people don't want you to know. You can't do it all by sitting in a room writing." Tewkesbury urges writers to "go to the place you're writing about. If you can't afford to do that, go to the library or a museum. Do something to be with people."
Tewkesbury is convinced that writers must take chances to succeed, and pursue their careers wholeheartedly. "If you're in it to make money, do something else." Working with Altman was a tremendous help in Tewkesbury's career, and she strongly recommends pursuing relationships with directors who are like-minded. "If you're passionate about this voice inside you, pursue directors who would marry well with that voice."
She downplays new writers' obsession with finding an agent. "An agent is nice, but you get your own work. An agent will help when you're hot." She urges writers to continue to generate new ideas and new material. "Keep writing. The hardest thing is to sell one script and not have another to follow it with."
Like every writer, Tewkesbury is frustrated by notes. But when a writer gets notes, Tewkesbury advises, "Don't start immediately. Give yourself time to let your defenses settle down. Sometimes the notes are good, sometimes they don't make sense, but read the script again and decide what you agree with. Make those changes first, then fight for the important stuff. Stand up for the essentials."
This ex-choreographer has mastered the moves required by the complex dance known as filmmaking. As one might expect from a writer and director to whom "sitting doesn't come naturally," Tewkesbury's career is in perpetual motion.
Lance Thompson writes for movies, television and magazines; tries not to give away the endings to upcoming movies in his motion picture advertising work; and has enjoyed his three years as a mentor in the SWN High School Fellowship Program.
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