The Paper Dragon (34 page)

Gray hair rising in waves from a high forehead, combed straight back without a part so that it seemed to extend the flowing line of his profile, gray eyes intelligently alert beneath black beetling brows, Ralph Knowles took the oath, and then sat, crossed his long legs, and waited for Genitori to begin.

The lawyers had decided between them that Genitori, as chief counsel for API, would conduct the direct examination. Their decision puzzled Ralph, who had never found Genitori impressive either in looks or in bearing, and who wondered now what empathy this dumpy little man could possibly evoke from the judge. He watched critically as Genitori walked slowly and ponderously toward the witness stand, and his feelings were somewhat like those of a star in the hands of a bad director. Genitori cleared his throat, sniffed, looked once at the gray sky beyond the courtroom windows, nodded to the judge, smiled, and then turned again to Ralph.

"Mr. Knowles," he said, "what do you do for a living?"

"I'm a motion picture writer and director," Ralph said.

"Have you always been a motion picture writer and director?"

"No, sir."

"What did you do before you began working in motion pictures?"

"I was a freelance writer of magazine pieces, and after that I did a great deal of dramatic work for radio. This was before the war, during the late thirties and early forties. Before television."

"What radio programs did you write for?"

"
Lux Radio Theater, Suspense, Mister District Attorney, The Green Hornet, The Shadow…
most of the shows that were around, I would say. One of my radio plays for
Suspense
was later made into a movie called
Armitus
. That was when I first became involved with motion pictures. I went to the Coast for story conferences on it, you see, and while I was there someone asked me if I would like to do a screenplay for him — not on my own property — and I said yes. I began doing screenplays after that, and a while later I began directing."

"How many motion pictures have you written, Mr. Knowles?"

"Since 1954, I've written seventeen screenplays, and directed nine of them myself."

"Did you write and direct
The Paper Dragon
?"

"Yes, sir."

"Alone?"

"Sir?"

"Were you the only writer of the screenplay for the motion picture titled
The Paper Dragon
?"

"I was."

"In what year was that screenplay written?"

"1963, I think it was. Yes, it must have been the latter part of '63."

"Until that time, had you ever heard of the plaintiff, Arthur Constantine?"

"No, sir."

"Or the play
Catchpole
?"

"No."

"Had you ever seen a synopsis of
Catchpole
?"

"I had not. I try to avoid synopses whenever possible. It seems unnatural, to me, for anyone to condense a five-hundred-page novel into a fifty-page report on it. If you did that with
Hamlet
, you'd end up with what sounded like a ghost story. I can remember the synopsis I read on my own radio play, the one they were filming, and I was appalled by what they'd done, eliminating all the nuances, all the depth, all the range of character, leaving only the bare bones — terrible. I made up my mind right then and there that I'd have nothing to do with synopses ever again. I've pretty much hewed to that line since."

"You did
not
, then read a synopsis of
Catchpole
?"

"No, sir."

"Did you ever see it performed?"

"Performed?"

"Yes. At the Fulton Theatre in New York?"

"No."

"Or anyplace else?"

"No, sir."

"Have you ever served with the United States armed forces?"

"I have."

"When?"

"May I ask where this is going, your Honor?" Brackman said.

"You'll see in a minute, Mr. Brackman," Genitori replied. "When were you in the armed forces, Mr. Knowles?"

"From July of 1943 to January of 1948."

"In what branch did you serve?"

"I was a fighter pilot in the Army Air Corps."

"Did you ever serve overseas?"

"Yes, sir. I left the United States in January of 1945, and was assigned to the Pacific Theater of Operations, where I remained until the time of my discharge."

"Where were you stationed in October of 1947, when Mr. Constantine's play was showing in New York?"

"I was stationed in Tokyo. Japan."

"When did you begin working for API?"

"In August of 1954."

"As what?"

"A writer at first. And later on, a director."

"During your initial period of employment there, was material ever submitted to you for consideration?"

"Material?"

"Plays, novels, television scripts?"

"Do you mean as possibilities for motion pictures?"

"Yes."

"Well, no. No one ever asked my opinion on whether or not a story should be purchased, if that's what you mean. In the beginning, I was simply handed a novel or a play, or whatever, and told it was my next assignment."

"To write a screenplay on it?"

"Yes. And when I first began directing, it worked much the same way. I would be assigned to direct a film, and I would direct it. Later on, of course, I was
asked
to direct, a producer would
come
to me with the material and ask if I would like to direct it or not."

"Material that had already been purchased?"

"Yes. And now, of course, 
I
can ask the studio to buy a property that I think is interesting, and if they agree it'll make a good movie, they'll usually go along with me and buy the property for me to make."

"Did you see synopses of any material you did not later translate to the screen?"

"No, sir. I told you, I avoid synopses like the plague."

"Now, you said earlier that you wrote the screenplay for
The Paper Dragon
…"

"Yes, sir, and directed it as well."

"How did you go about writing this screenplay?"

"I don't think I understand you."

"What did you use as source material?"

"Oh. Well, the
book
, of course. It had been submitted to the studio in galleys, and a producer there liked it — Jules Fairchild — and asked me to take a look at it, and I thought it was something I'd like to do. I think I saw the magazine serialization, too, which was pretty close to the book,
McCall's
published it, I think, or
Redbook
, I'm not sure which, a two-part serial."

"The book was your basic source, would you say?"

"Yes. Although I did do additional research on my own. A book, you understand — even a fine book like
The Paper Dragon
, for which I have only the greatest respect — it's still only a book, you see, and there's a great deal involved in turning it into a motion picture… well, I don't know if I should go into all of this."

"Please do," McIntyre said.

"I was introduced to Mr. Driscoll for the first time this morning," Ralph said, "but I suppose he must have been a little puzzled by the changes made in bringing his book to the screen — so perhaps this will be instructive to him as well." Ralph turned and smiled at Driscoll, who was watching and listening attentively from the jury box. "There are some people who feel that the novel and the motion picture are similar in technique and in scope, but I disagree with them. They argue that a novelist can immediately turn from a minute examination of a woman's mouth, let us say, to a battlefield with hundreds of men in an infantry charge, that sort of thing — in other words, from a closeup to a full shot, and all without any transition, in much the same way that a camera would handle it. But we must remember that the novelist is dealing with the written word, and he must describe that woman's mouth in words, he must describe that infantry charge in words, which means that those words must first be registered on the reader's eye, and then carried to the reader's brain where, depending on how good or bad the writer is, there will be an intellectual response that will hopefully trigger an emotional response.

"Well, we have a situation completely diametrical to this in the motion picture, because we go directly for the emotional response; there is no need for a middleman, there is no need for a brain that will translate words into images that may or may not stimulate the tears or laughter we are going for. We
start
with the images, you see. That is our job, putting images on the screen in sequence, arranging and editing and putting in order these images that are designed to evoke a
direct
emotional response. I can tell you that if I come at that screen with a blood-stained knife, you are going to rear back in fright and I don't need any words to accompany it, that knife is its own motivation and its own explanation. Or if I fill that screen with a beautiful woman's face, and I show her eyes lidded and her lips parting, I don't have to accompany it with any interior monologues, I don't
need
poetry to describe her, we
know
she wants to be kissed, and we
want
to kiss her because the appeal is direct and emotional, the response is immediate.

"So, in beginning my work on a screenplay, I look upon the novel or the stage play or whatever it is I'm translating only as an outline of something that will become larger and grander than the printed word allowed. Even an excellent book like
The Paper Dragon
, for which I have nothing but the deepest veneration, becomes a detailed study for what will be my film. I sift through it and sort through it, trying to cut through the maze of words, trying to get through to the emotion hidden there, distilling what the author meant, translating his
words
directly into
images
so that the audience reaction will be immediate and overwhelming. In short, I eliminate the intellectual response in favor of the emotional.
Then
, if we're lucky, when these images have registered, when they have evoked the proper
emotional
response, why then the audience, if we are lucky, will experience an
intellectual
response as well. That's the difference between a novel and a motion picture, and it is this very difference that makes the film a much more difficult form in which to work and, in my estimation, a much higher art form."

"I see," Genitori said.

"Yes," Ralph said, and glanced toward the jury box to smile at Driscoll.

"You said you did some additional research…"

"Yes."

"… before you began work on your screenplay?"

"Yes."

"Can you tell us what this research was?"

"Yes, certainly. As I indicated earlier, I spent a great deal of time in the Pacific during and after World War II, and I think it was the setting of Mr. Driscoll's fine novel that first attracted me to it — the possibility of shooting in Korea, a beautiful country, we got some really excellent footage of the countryside, you know. But in addition to that, I was interested in the book as a study of war, as an extension really of my own attempts to understand war in my early radio plays and also in one or two other films I had made before
The Paper Dragon
. War and its impact on man, what it does to men, what it causes them to become, this was what interested me. I discovered that a lot of material had been written on the subject, not only fiction, and not only the elongated minute-by-minute battle breakdowns, but serious studies that appeared in a great many of the magazines —
Life, Look
, the
Saturday Evening Post, The New York Times Magazine
— learned and informative articles about the behavior of our soldiers during the Korean conflict, the Korean
war
, I should say.

"These articles, and books as well, were written by military analysts, and psychiatrists, and historians, all of whom were probing the behavior of our men during that small war — I thought at one point of changing the title of the picture to
The Small War
, by the way, which I thought would be more emotionally effective than
The Paper Dragon
, but the studio objected because they didn't like the use of the word 'small' in any title. Where was I?"

"Books and magazine articles…"

"Yes, about the behavior of our men in Korea, the betrayal of comrades, the informing, the brainwashing, all of it. I studied these books and articles very carefully, using Mr. Driscoll's novel, of course, as my primary source because it was an excellent book and, let's face it, the only one we owned the rights to. We didn't own any of these other books or articles I studied for background material, you see, and besides Mr. Driscoll's novel was very exciting in itself and a firm basis upon which to build a movie. But before I began translating it into images, I also went to several Army bases to get a feeling of what the situation was like
today
as opposed to what I experienced during World War II. I visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Fort Dix in New Jersey, and also the infantry school at Fort Benning. That was the extent of the research I did before I began writing my screenplay."

"Would it then be fair to say that a screenwriter must perforce make certain changes in translating a novel into a film?"

"Absolutely."

"I ask this because I would like to explore some of the
specific
changes you made, Mr. Knowles, and perhaps find an explanation for them. For example, in Mr. Driscoll's novel, the character named Private Colman does
not
wear eyeglasses. Yet when you brought this character to the screen, you chose to show him
wearing
eyeglasses. Now why did you do that?"

"For the actor," Ralph said.

"What do you mean?"

"Not entirely, but at least that was a major consideration. The actor who portrayed Private Colman was a man named Olin Quincy, and he wears eyeglasses. I mean, off the screen, as a part of his normal life. There was a part of the screenplay that called for him to read from a map, and he asked me if it would be all right for him to wear his glasses throughout, so that he could actually do the reading as called for. I said it would be all right. So that was one consideration. But also, if you remember, there's another soldier in the book who wears eyeglasses — Ken-worthy, the fellow who swears a lot — and in one scene there's a mortar attack and his glasses are lifted from his face by the concussion. It seemed to me that if he were the only one in the movie wearing eyeglasses, it would look like a put-up job, as if we had him wearing glasses only so they could be later knocked off, do you understand? So to take the curse off this, I decided to put glasses on another soldier as well, and the logical choice was Private Colman."