Victims of intellectual torture

Spectator, The, Mar 11, 2000 by Leclere, Margaret

And then, there it is: the answer. On page 13 it is stated that source material is material not written specifically for film but acquired by a producer from other sources'. In other words, the original screenplay is simply not acknowledged as a piece of literary creation, and intellectual theft, sanctioned by the WG, is the result.

I know this because, save for it happening to Greene, most of the above is true. It happened to my husband, Eric Leclere, the writer of an original screenplay called The Lost Son, produced by Stephen Woolley's company, Scala Productions. In the end, no thanks to the WG but to an exchange of letters with Scala's lawyers (who also tried to claim that 'screenplays are not source material'), he was given an additional credit which read 'based on an original story by...' But, as everybody knows, in the movies this credit can be secured on the strength of a few words on a restaurant napkin.

But, even if the above could never have happened to a writer of Greene's stature, it happens to writers all the time. In the case of The Lost Son Mr Woolley, having secured the rights to the material, declined to meet the writer to discuss the work. It is time the WG took action before the failures of their arbitration policy damage the lives and careers of more writers.

And while the word 'integrity' is in the air ... The Lost Son, budgeted at L6 million, received f2 million of public money from the Arts Council's Lottery funding. Were the Arts Council aware, when they awarded the ;E2 million, that the original writer - or artist? - had been sacked from his own art work, that nine months later the producers had invited him back and that he had declined in order to avoid further bad treatment? As they are supposed to 'monitor' proceedings, I imagine they were. To some, this would signal a doomed project. Yet the Arts Council saw fit to proceed, giving a green light to the U million on the basis of a script delivered to them just two weeks after the original author had declined to return, by a writer also hired within the space of those two weeks. Those must have been two busy weeks. Integrity and the movies...