Of words and images

FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA brought a new tradition to mainstream Hollywood cinema with his "The Godfather" (1972). Its success marked a period of transition between classic Hollywood and new world cinema. While touring Europe, Coppola received a zoetrope from Mogen Scott-Hansen, founder of a studio called Lanterna Film and owner of a famous collection of early motion picture making equipment. A zoetrope is an optical toy that converts a series of pictures of successive frames into a semblance of motion.

Inspired by the equipment and the spirit of the Lanterna Film, Coppola launched a magazine Zoetrope. Through this, he wanted to revive the tradition of literary magazines and periodicals carrying stories, "that among other things inspired and taught the screen writers who became responsible for fine movie writing ..."

Coppola felt that the story should be more important than the screenplay. Great writers like John O'Hara, Dorothy Parker and F. Scott Fitzgerald provided basic material for the movies. In the 1940s and 1950s, writers of distinction inspired and taught fine screenwriters. This inspired Coppola to "take the story department out of the clouds and make it real in the form of a magazine".

Reading a short story, he said, is a very enjoyable experience, while reading a screenplay is a "dreaded obligation". The short story "works at you from inside the brain, filling in images, characters, ideas and plot without having to describe them step by step. After finishing the story you close your eyes and think about it, and realise you have seen it because you have experienced it. You get more with less. This is a good habit for the storyteller to get into." This is, perhaps, the best statement on the relation between story and screenplay, that Coppola elucidated in the premiere issue in February 1997.

Why a short story magazine? The short story approximates the dimensions of an average film. Novels tend to have too much material, but short stories contain all the basic elements essential for a film: character, plot and setting. Like movies, great stories transport you, they change you, and the bad ones - well, at least they are short.

Zoetrope concentrates on short fiction and does not accept or publish screenplays or treatments. It is intended to be a bridge between story tellers at large, encouraging them to work in the natural format of the short story. "If a single story evolves into a memorable film," stated Coppola, "it would more than justify our efforts to produce this magazine". Stories are not selected on the basis of whether or not they can be made into a film, but on the voice of the writer, the quality of writing, the lustre of characters, the depth of the plot ... Many of the stories have won honours like the Best American Short Stories, The O.Henry Award Prize Stories and Best New Stories from the South. Melissa Bank's and Sara Power's stories have been published in the Best American Short Stories, 1999.

The current volume of Zoetrope contains the best writing that has appeared in the magazine to date. In the introduction, Coppola raises an issue relevant to India - the world's largest film producing country - none of the major film producing studios focus on cultivation of writing. "Even though many own publishing companies (which they force to mimic the studio's approach to artistic creation), and base movies on successful books, none of them that I know of devote serious resources to the cultivation of literary work - stories from contemporaries who help us understand our lives and our times". Research and development departments of oil, technology and automobile companies spend fortunes to explore and develop basic resource material. But film companies jump over the literary part and got right to the screenplay to begin budgeting and casting.

Coppola wants to build the world's greatest story repertoire, but admits that it is not possible because if a magazine publishes only stories that can be adapted as good films, it would exclude many writers. Such stores may teach the readers about life, but may not make memorable movies.

The essays in the collection explore the interface between the different media and their orientations. Movies, writes John Nichols in his essay "To Make A Long Story Short", are not like epic poems but like sonnets, with limitations, where the story has to be told with great economy and one can not play with the structure of the movie. David Mamet feels that films have moved away from the dramatic medium and have become "celebrations of our mercantile triumph - in effect pure advertisement". Writing a screenplay is not an act of creation, but one of "obeisance to the god of commerce. The public pays its fine and spends two hours in celebration of waste ..." It is highly debatable how many will subscribe to this opinion.

Salman Rushdie narrates his tale of woe - of how his efforts to make Midnight's Children (still his best book) into a teleserial failed. Other than the sense of frustration and feelings of depression, the essay does not throw any light into the relation between film and fiction.

Other than the three essays mentioned, there are 15 brilliant stories in the collection. Only a few would make basic material for good screenplays. But the stories are powerful narratives that will make the reader sit up and think. In craft, style and technique, the narratives are varied and, so, a reader is able to experience a variety of human situations, images, characters and experiences. The readers are taken on a tour of the terrains and plateaus of life and into the social fabric of American life.

Some are simple narratives where technique is direct and simple while, in others, images and situations are evocative through poignant and lyrical contours of the plot.

But each piece, true to the avowed objective of Zoetrope, has a strong thread of a binding story and that offers scope for the rich traditions of short story. Each story has a distinct flavour and identity which will elevate the position of the short story in the context of the interrelation between film and fiction.

K. KUNHI KRISHNAN

Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope All Story, Edited by Adrienne Brodeur and Samantha Schnee, Harcourt Inc.,$14.00.

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