I'm tempted to say, 'Writing treatments is like designing a film by hiring six million monkeys to tear out pages of an encyclopedia, then you put the pages through a paper-shredder, randomly grab whatever intact lines are left, sing them in Italian to a Spanish deaf-mute, and then make story decisions with the guy via conference call.' But no... compared to writing treatments, that makes sense, too.
Interpretation
Writing treatments for films can be an absurdly complicated and nonsensical task.
Terry Rossio uses hyperbolic humor to illustrate the chaotic and often frustrating process of writing film treatments. He suggests that the task can feel so convoluted and random that even a wildly silly analogy involving monkeys and communication barriers seems more straightforward. This highlights the struggles writers face in consolidating ideas into a cohesive form for storytelling, pointing to the inherent challenges and absurdities in the creative process.
In practice
To illustrate the complexities of film writing, I shared Terry Rossio's quote during a screenwriting workshop.
When you first start out in stand-up and, probably, as any performer, you enjoy the attention so much, and even though that hasn't died down on stage, it certainly has satiated whatever was in me that was needing that much attention. When I'm off stage, it's not something that I really need.
In a dancer, there is a reverence for such forgotten things as the miracle of the small beautiful bones and their delicate strength.
If I don't fall in love with my characters, I cannot shoot.
A good artist should be isolated. If he isn't isolated, something is wrong.
As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.
Writing is both bomb and bomb disposal-a necessary shattering of cliche and assumption, and a powerful defusing of the soul-destroying messages of modern life (that nothing matters, nothing changes, money is everything, etc). Writing is a state of being as well as an act of doing.
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