The golden rule of the film-making game is - altogether now - 'nobody knows anything'. Scriptwriter William Goldman first set this in stone in his book Adventures in the Screen Trade (in amongst detailing exactly what is that he knows, presumably on the off-chance). Scenario is very like a compact British take on Goldman's famous work, following the same part-manual, part-memoir template. In all fairness, Tudor Gates is far less of a famous name than William Goldman: Gates' heyday was spent writing late-period Hammer horrors and Seventies British sex comedies. This isn't to suggest that Gates 'doesn't know anything': merely than he's got a job on his hands to prove his wisdom is worth heeding.
Credit where it's due, Scenario is very readable and winningly informal as Gates lays down the principles of building a well-constructed screenplay. Along the way he selects key films from movie history to illustrate his points, and drops in brief episodes from his own long career as a writer. The result is clear and - for the most part - concise, although his engagingly chatty style occasionally lapses into being rambling and basic points are rather hammered home to the point of repetition.
With limited space, Gates' own reminiscences never quite take flight, though: unlike Goldman's lengthier books, we never quite gain insight into the author's own creative processes. This is a shame, as more of this engaging personal touch would lift Scenario above the plethora of existing scriptwriting manuals: there's little here that hasn't already been distilled by script gurus such as Goldman, Syd Field and Robert McKee. Gates is perhaps a little conservative in his choice of study films: as regards recent years, he seems especially enamoured of Erin Brockovich (2000), and American Beauty (1999) is examined in some detail. The text is also somewhat lopsided, with a huge portion taken up with pointers for laying sound foundations for a script, only leaving room for a brief concluding dash through the mechanics of actual writing. (There really ought to be a section on Taking Credit, too, as Gates repeatedly mentions writing Barbarella (1967) - a project that went though the hands of almost ten writers besides Gates, not least the late, great Terry Southern.)
In all, this is an easy and accessible introduction to the world of scripting, which only disappoints because it leaves so much obvious room for improvement. And for all the undoubtedly sound advice contained within, ultimately it raises a wry smile when Gates takes great pains to insist that every script must above all else be about something. Exactly what his own Lust For a Vampire (1970) was about, he never reveals.
Reviewed by Andy Murray
