Christopher Hampton Talks Screenwriter Control; ‘Dangerous Liaisons’ Sprint Against Miloš Forman – Qumra Masterclass

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Oscar-winning screenwriter, playwright and film director Christopher Hampton was on feisty form in a masterclass in Qatar earlier this week as part of the Doha Film Institute’s Qumra talent incubator event (March 10-16).

Hampton, who won Academy Awards for the screenplays of Dangerous Liaisons and The Father and was Oscar-nominated for Atonement, urged aspiring screenwriters in the auditorium to try to retain some sort of control of their work and creative vision. “I would advise anybody to try to get at least some sort of associate producer credit to maintain a grip on the material and you have to fight… fight with a lot of people,” he said. “They don’t want to give it to you.

They don’t want to give you those powers, but I’ve always argued that since the writer is the origin of the piece, they deserve to be respected.” “Don’t be unreasonable because there is a very strong possibility that other people’s ideas will be as good as yours but there comes a moment when your original idea is being deformed.” Hampton recalled pushing back against Sydney Pollack over modifications to his script for the 2002 adaptation of Graham Greene’s The Quiet American, on which the latter was an executive producer. “The notes I got had the effect of shifting the character a tiny, tiny bit every time we did a revision,” he recounted. “I said to him, ‘I’ve just realised that you keep doing this and you end up with a character facing in entirely the opposite direction to where it was in the first place.

You’ve made so many little modifications to the character that it’s not the same character anymore.” “Only you the writer know what the character is meant to represent, and small changes can compromise that vision, you’ve really got to fight