When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released its annual Oscar nominations, DreamWorks' AMERICAN BEAUTY received eight: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Cinematography, Best Editing, Best Original Score, and Best Original Screenplay.

You might notice that Best Original Screenplay is last on this list.

That's not the Script Doctor's choice. It came to me that way in the special Variety email dispatch that arrived on my desktop at 10:09 the morning of the nominations.

Variety's decision to place Best Original Screenplay 23rd out of 23 on its email list says something about the place of screenwriters in the movie-making process.

Robert Towne once argued that many Hollywood people hate screenwriters precisely because the screenplay is the starting point: No matter what is said about how a movie gets made, one fact is inescapable: until the screenwriter does his job, nobody else, like actors, can do theirs.

Until the screenwriter does his job, nobody else has a job. In other words, he is the asshole who keeps everybody else from going to work.

By the time Awards season rolls around, the writer's role has long since faded into the woodwork, dwarfed by the performers, the director, the cinematographer, and even the makeup artists.

Battalions of artists stand between the visionary screenwriter hunched over his computer and the audience sitting in a darkened theater munching popcorn months or years later.

Frankly, who thinks about the writer when watching Annette Bening clean a house in her underwear? But it all starts with the screenplay.

In the case of AMERICAN BEAUTY, one story behind Alan Ball's original screenplay is well worth repeating. Rumor has it that Steven Spielberg--a man so powerful that when industry apparatchiks mention "Steven" it's always him--read the screenplay over the weekend, came back to the DreamWorks' development team with an amazing sentence.

"Let's make this," Steven said, "and not change a word."

999 times out of a thousand that just doesn't happen. Hold on. Make that 999,999 out of a million.

If stone tablet-laden Moses were to stagger down from Mount Sinai onto the Universal Lot where DreamWorks has its offices, nobody would blink if Steven said "Do we really need ten commandments? That's a bit long. Could five do the trick? And the order stinks: let's move adultery up before murder."

He'd probably be right, too. Yet magically, astonishingly, inconceivably, Steven gave AMERICAN BEAUTY a greenlight without any notes.

What are notes? The gasoline powering the development engine. Notes--which can range from three pages to an infinity of commentary--are the medium through which movie executives communicate with each other and with writers.

Boiled down, a set of notes is a lot like an extended version of the comments page from a coverage report. Notes describe how the screenplay must change between drafts in order to get one step closer to a greenlight.

There are good notes and there are bad notes.

Good notes searchingly probe into a script's plot, characters and themes, pain-stakingly helping the project to become its best and truest self.

Bad notes try to make your script just like whatever movie has recently made money, even though your tender romantic comedy set in a cancer hospice bears little resemblance to SNOW DAY.

Some writers hate notes. Some embrace them. But notes are inevitable.

Except with AMERICAN BEAUTY.

To get a greenlight with no notes is like skipping three grades in high school. Alan Ball suddenly became that geeky 13 year old senior who goes on to own a multi-million dollar internet startup before he can vote.

"Let's make this," Steven said, "and not change a word."

Now. Here's the funny part. They still changed it. A lot.

If you know people in Da Biz, ask around and ye shall find ample copies of Ball's brilliant original screenplay. It's one of those scripts that hit the town like a tsunami. People save it, and pass it around.

Examining some of the changes between the script and the movie is a fascinating exercise in development.

Note to the avid moviegoer: If you still haven't seen this wonderful film, then you might want to go out and catch it before reading the next few paragraphs.

Example #1. Lester and Angela:

In the original screenplay Lester (Kevin Spacey) actually has sex with sixteen year old Angela (Mena Suvari). As they start, Angela winces and cries out in pain. She looks up at Lester, embarrassed, and says "this is my first time." Now remember that Angela has spent the previous hour and a half talking big about her many sexual partners. Lester does not think that he is having sex with a virgin until that moment.

In the movie, Lester stops the moment he realizes that Angela is a virgin. Here it is a different kind of victory: Lester sees Angela as a person--rather than as a sex object--for the first time. He wakes up to the fact that he loves his daughter Jane, and that he cares about her happiness.

Is this a good change or a bad change? Tough call.

From a commercial standpoint it is unquestionably a good change because it is less risky. Any movie that portrays a 42 year old man having sex with a minor as a GOOD thing is bound to offend somebody. A movie that portrays a 42 year old man desperately wanting to have sex with a minor--but then thinking better of it at the last moment--is safer.

But from an aesthetic standpoint?

Personally, I like the original version better. It's more interesting and truer to Lester's character arc. But it is a safe bet that the movie would have made less money if it had not been changed.

Example #2. Colonel Fitts and the Nazi Plate:

When Colonel Fitts (played by the remarkable Chris Cooper) discovers that Ricky showed Jane his Nazi plate he explodes into a rage, beating Ricky into a pile of Jello. It is a powerful and disturbing scene, vividly showing the Colonel as a tyrant.

But why shouldn't Ricky show the plate to Jane? Why does the Colonel care? The movie's answer is perfectly adequate: this is the sort of thing that dictatorial military fathers do.

The original screenplay fills in the details.

After Colonel Fitts beats Ricky he is ashamed. He opens the cabinet and reaches behind the Nazi plate, where he finds a packet of Vietnam-era photographs. These are pictures of Rick, the Colonel's gay lover.

A flashback sequence shows Rick being fatally shot by a teenaged sniper, then dying in the Colonel's arms. This explains the Colonel's rage much more clearly.

He is a deeply closeted homosexual, hiding his gayness from the world behind a mask of homophobia. All the while still clutching tightly to the memory of Rick. Note also that the Colonel named his son Ricky after his dead gay lover. The movie deletes all references to the Colonel's gay lover, excising the flashback to Viet Nam.

Good change or bad change?

In this case, it is an extremely good change because in screenwriting there is such a thing as TOO MUCH EXPLANATION.

Sure, the Colonel's gay past more fully explains the moment when he kisses Lester in the garage (this is after the Colonel mistakenly thinks he sees his son Ricky performing oral sex on Lester). But on-screen that explanation would also rob the moment of all its shock value. "Ho hum," the moviegoer thinks. "We've known he's gay since the middle of the flick."

There's a lesson here, fellow writers: let the audience interpret the story. When the Colonel kisses Lester the moviegoer's mind revs into passing gear to make an electrifying series of deductions: "Oh ho! So THAT'S why the Colonel has been badmouthing gays for the whole movie. He's secretly gay himself!"

At this moment, sitting in the theater, the moviegoer's handful of popcorn has stopped halfway to his mouth. He has forgotten that the small child in the aisle behind him is kicking the back of his chair. He is engaged both by the movie and by his own intelligence in understanding the movie. And that's what you want.

Example #3. The Frame Device.

Right now you may be thinking "WHAT frame device?"

Let me refresh your memory.

This is the opening sequence involving Fleishman, the police detective in charge of investigating Lester's murder. With the help of Colonel Fitts--the real killer--Fleishman pins the murder on Ricky and Jane. The Colonel uses the videotaped conversation between Jane and Ricky about putting Lester "out of his misery" to frame his own son. The story starts with Ricky in jail softly crooning "Psycho Killer" to his cell. It ends with Jane and Ricky going down for first degree murder.

Remember?

Of course not. Director Sam Mendes shot it that way, and with editor Tariq Anwar he arranged a version of the movie including the frame device, as written. (You'll probably get to see the footage in 2001, when the DVD comes out.)

And then they cut it.

The story did not need the frame narrative.

Frame devices package stories into pre-fabricated genres. The AMERICAN BEAUTY frame announced that the movie was a murder mystery. "Who killed Lester Burnham?"

The people watching the first cut discovered that "who killed Lester" was not a terribly good question. The interesting parts of the movie are the characters: Carolyn, who chants "I will not be a victim" while listening to a motivational cassette. Ricky, who finds crystalline beauty in a dead bird. And Lester, who dies thinking "I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life."

The story itself--rather than the question that the story answers--is fascinating.

The Moral

"Let's make this," Steven said, "and not change a word."

They changed it anyhow, but at the end of the day it is still Alan Ball's screenplay.

What the development of AMERICAN BEAUTY shows is that stories are flexible in a tectonic way. Move one part of the story and all the other parts move to compensate: the narrative land masses quake and quiver, then settle into new relationships.

Yes, land masses rubbing against each other also create destructive earthquakes.

Development can sometimes be a harsh business.

But what's the alternative?

Writing a screenplay is a lot like being a parent. At some point you send your child out into the world where other people participate in his life and development. Inevitably, you will not always like the direction your child goes, but the only way to avoid that is to chain the kid to the bed.

Translation: Nobody will ever read your script.

It may take a village to raise a child, but it takes an army to make a movie.

Between the screenwriter and the screen a thousand or more people stand ready--waiting impatiently--to do their jobs.

Movie making is inherently collaborative. If you are talented and lucky enough to find somebody who wants to transform your script into a movie, then your script is going to change.

That's not a bad thing.

Successful Hollywood people are smart storytelling professionals. They want to help you to make your script better. If you cannot bear the thought of changing one precious line of your script, if changing a secondary character's gender from male to female makes you break out in angry hives, if changing your thriller into a drama (or vice versa) is a fate worse than death, then you're in the wrong business.

Perfectionists write novels.

Screenwriting is for team players.