Songwriters can’t explain. You get an idea and you don’t know where it’s come from. And if you’re lucky, you have a pencil or pen and can write it down.
Pete SeegerRead
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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
WritingTreatmentsFilmCreativityAbsurdity
In practice
Example use cases
To illustrate the complexities of film writing, I shared Terry Rossio's quote during a screenwriting workshop.
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