Cultural Learnings for Make Benefit Glorious Blog Post

I think LeFevre has a knack for using great examples (and not just quotations) to back up her points. So to give us something concrete to talk about, I thought I'd try one of my own.

The Oscar nominations came out this past week. The movie Borat was nominated for “Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay.” The nominees from Borat are three writers for “screenplay/story,” one for just “screenplay” and one for just “story.” This strikes me as interesting for several reasons. First, although the main character of the movie – Borat – is a fictional creation of his portrayer, the rest of the movie presents itself as being improvised – Borat goes up to people and asks them questions. So although one question to be asked is how much of the movie was staged (read: scripted) and how do we feel about that, I think more interesting is the question of what an improvised movie's screenplay would look like. Is the screenplay just a list of questions that Borat was going to ask, and funny things he was going to do? Did someone write down the supposedly spontaneous responses of his interviewees and submit them as “the screenplay” to the Academy? If all the writers wrote was questions and a overall structure, is that creative process on par with the other nominees? Is that fair? Does this mean that documentaries can now be in the adapted screenplay category?

I am not the only one asking these questions. The Writer's Guild of America, when pressed, said that Borat did indeed have a script, although they wouldn't say what it was, issuing the following cryptic statement: “The Writers Guild basically recognizes the creative process of writing, whether it's traditional drama or comedy, whether it's reality or documentary or animation. It's all writing.” The WGA is also fighting for recognition for reality-TV writers (who apparently need recognition). Sacha Baron Cohen, the head writer and main character of the film, said that the “script” for the movie and how it finally turned out are “remarkably the same.”

In my mind, this raises a number of deliciously rhetorical and social questions. If I interview someone and put their spoken words on film, does that make them a writer? Am I ethically required to “cite” them, so to speak? Would Cohen not be getting sued if his interviewees had received credit, and the Oscar nomination, for their words? Overall, how do we represent the social nature of writing? (As Maggie sez, LeFevre's name is the only one on the cover.) Do we need to think of new ways to pay tribute to our influences, or do we call the whole thing off and only give credit the “main” writer?

(As an addendum, if we want to see the social nature of a lone creative act, we only need listen to the endless thank-you's of the Oscar acceptance speech.)