Originality and Authorship in the Development of the Screen Idea

This chapter examines whether, in screen idea development, we are right to focus on individual authorship as the source of originality in a situation that is observably a group activity. We usually default to the idea of a single author, working within (and sometimes against) the rules of the game. We admire a writer’s ‘voice’, vision and talent, and think of group work as feedback designed to perfect that, to polish it up in ways suitable for production. It seems as if we still lean towards the notion of an inexplicable Muse inspiring the Artist, who then crafts it on to the page. The Artist’s Genius is then measured by the size and novelty of their contribution to the Work. Simple, no? Unfortunately not. In this chapter, I discuss how we can recognise at least two views simultaneously—crediting the individual, alongside the centrality of creative group work—if we see the same thing as if through different lenses, offering different perspectives. I refer to the power of groups to create new work, something more than the sum of their individual parts, emerging through their collaboration as ‘sparks’. What shapes this is the ‘doxa’, or the received wisdom about screenwriting that defines the screen idea and becomes the common discourse during development. In this chapter I present an original survey outlining the Western orthodoxy (based on the doxa) in the form of a manifesto. I make two suggestions: firstly that we might reconsider ‘originality’ as being a practical engagement with, and ‘re-writing’ of the orthodoxy; and secondly that we might avoid the rigidity of linking authorship to certain roles, by considering on a case by case basis who might be thought of as ‘le Responsable’.