I said at the top of my last little missive, DIALOGUE 1.0, that dialogue is a "very important/not at all important" part of screenwriting. I suppose that bears some explanation (particularly since it doesn't make a damn bit of sense . . . duh).

No question about it. Good, sharp dialogue sells scripts. It's crucial to the attraction of talent, above and below the line. It's a big factor in making your characters leap off the page and shake hands with the reader.

It's important. Real important.

Until the first day of principal photography.

Because that's the day actors start speaking your lines. And the actor's job is to embody the truth of the character he or she's been hired to play. To that end, they will do anything to make your dialogue work. Odds are, they'll change it.

This is absolutely fine.

The actor's challenge is to memorize a line, process it and deliver it as if it just "occurred" to him. He's got to own that fucking line. In other words, it's not your line anymore, it's his. And, damnit, he'll do whatever he needs to sell it to the audience.

I used to think it was the height of hubris for an actor to tell a writer, "My character wouldn't say this."

The nerve! After all, the writer created the character. The writer is God. And here's this puny little mortal trying to tell Him what His creation would say?

Newsflash.

Except in situations in which the he's more concerned about his image than he is in embodying the truth of the character (as in the famous Dustin Hoffman flashlight fiasco outlined in Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade), the actor is always right.

See, the writer is a generalist. He creates everyone in the story, gives them stuff to do and say.

The actor's a specialist. His job is all about just one thing: his character.

So if a line of dialogue isn't motivated or it's out of voice or it's just impossible to say, it's up to the actor to either:

a.) ask the writer, "why am I saying this?" and get a logical explanation; or
b.) just fucking change it.

Believe it or not, in most cases it's no big deal.

In a work of drama, the dialogue is no more than a vessel. The actor loads that vessel with a priceless, ephemeral and often sublime cargo: Emotional Truth.

And that's the product we are delivering to the audience--those moments of spellbinding recognition in which the film strums deep emotional chords by shouting, "Look! Look what's happening now! What would you do if it was you? Oh my god! Oh my god what's gonna happen next!?"

And I hate to break it to all you budding Billy Wilders out there, but nine out of ten times, those moments are not prompted by deft, snappy dialogue, but the emotional content the actor brings to it. If the vessel can't accommodate that cargo, well, it's time to build a new boat.

Most often, that's done on set.

Which brings up another issue: If the writer is not available on set, the "a. or b." option outlined above becomes moot. Just because a line is not clearly motivated doesn't mean that it isn't motivated. There may be a perfectly good reason for the character to lie or mislead another by saying something that seems off the wall.

For instance, there was a line in BLIND JUSTICE in which the protagonist, Canaan, is being questioned by the town doctor, Caroline, regarding a baby girl under his care.

			CAROLINE 
		What's her name? 
		  
		
			CANAAN 
		Nothing.  Baby.  Man died 
		before he could tell me. 
		  
			CAROLINE 
		Too bad. 
		 
		 
			CANAAN 
		Yeah.  Shame I had to kill 
		him.  

I took no end of grief from the director and producers regarding that line. It really got ugly. They insisted it was confusing, that it made the protagonist look like a bad-guy. Furthermore, they said, The Star was "very concerned" about the line.

I responded that I didn't want this character to be perceived as a "white-hat." My intent was to convey the fact that this guy was no angel, that he was even capable of killing an infant's father given the right circumstances.

"Then," said the director, "tell us the circumstances. Have him say something like, 'I had no choice. The guy was drunk and crazy and bad. It was him or me.'"

"That's ridiculous," I said, "Canaan's not going to defend his actions. If he did, it would imply that he has moral misgiving about what he'd done. He doesn't. Because the guy needed killing."

"So put it in the dialogue!" said the director, "Tell them why!"

"I don't need to. Because in this movie, there is not a single occasion in which Canaan puts a bullet in a guy who isn't bad and begging for it. Given this, there's absolutely no reason for the audience to assume that the baby's father was a good guy. It's like this: Canaan only shoots bad guys. Canaan shot the baby's father. Therefore, the baby's father must be a bad guy."

"I think," said the director (in his insufferably haughty British accent), "you're giving far too much credit to the audience."

I refused to change it. I refused to cut it.

The star, Armand Assante flew into town for a meeting. Armand is a very smart man. You know why? Because he insisted on seeing the writer. Over the objections of the director, he insisted on meeting me.

He brought up The Line. He wanted to know why the character says it. He needed motivation.

I said, "This guy is a loner. A very private man. He spends years at a time without saying a word to anyone. He's being peppered with questions by this woman. He wants her to stop. When he says "It's a shame I had to kill him," he's actually saying "Quit asking all these fucking questions. Cuz, trust me, you're not gonna like the the answers."

Armand's face lit up. He totally understood its importance and that a cut or change would compromise the character's emotional truth. That's why I fought for it (versus many, many others I changed without complaint).

Now, had these issues occurred on the set in my absence, odds are the line would have been dropped to the detriment of the script. That's why many smart directors insist that the writer be on set for consultation.

The only problem is, some writers are total idiots. They have hissy-fits every time someone insists on changing a fucking comma. Even when the actors stick to the text, they sulk when the delivery doesn't quite match the way they imagined it when they hammered it out on the page.

That's why many smart directors insist that the writer be barred from the set.

Which kind of a writer are you?