Lena Dunham | BAFTA Screenwriters' Lecture series

we are here tonight to celebrate with the Glorious Lena Dunham whose brilliant work includes Girls Seven Days in Hell camping industry sharpstick and her joyous new movie Catherine called birdie among the many brilliant qualities that Mark Lena's work perhaps one of the most striking is her incredible compassion for how contradictory and absurd humans can be we are lucky she's in our world ladies and gentlemen Lena Dunham [Applause] for being here I guess I don't have to lean in like that do I can just be thank you all so much for being here to bafta this is a total honor to Jeremy for organizing such an incredible group of writers I have been pouring over um all of the videos online and I'm rightfully intimidated so I will try to impart the small amount that I think that I may possibly know to you this evening and thank you so much to Dolly who's joining me afterwards when people ask me why writers particularly this writer write I have a few canned answers well maybe canned is the wrong word that implies that they're fake that they're sound bites that are meant to conceal a deeper truth that I don't want to share and there's almost nothing that I don't want to share to start with I'm not a mysterious writer like Thomas pension or that Elena Ferrante lady who everyone's always running around Italy looking for and saying I think I found her she's just a grocery store clerk with broken glasses who doesn't give a [ __ ] about you I wish that I was a Ferrante but I have an almost comical lack of Mystique if you want me I'm here in fact one reason I write is because I find all forms of mystery absolutely agonizing and trying to debunk shame and secrecy for myself and for others is actually my primary motivation when other writers do it it's the intellectual equivalent of a cozy blanket to me the closest thing we can get to a guarantee that the universe is not ultimately just a black hole you're born alone and you die alone kid my dad used to say to me comfortingly implying that we have to get comfortable with ourselves on this endless Highway and yes it's essentially true but if we can hack the system connect so deeply in life that we're linked in some way forever wouldn't that be a beautiful thing so back to these reasons the ones I offer when I'm asked a question that's rather ground rather Grand and roundly impossible to quantify which is really why do writers write and before I share these I'll say they're all true in their way because one of the first things that a writer learns by writing and if they're lucky enough Distributing this work into the world and getting the varied response it will inevitably elicit is that the truth is subjective there are many truths and each of them can be as true as any other depending on the characters the scene the weather the costumes when I offer a story about an ex-lover for example and his deplorable Behavior or dark impenetrability I'm not lying I'm never lying I'm telling you what I know to the best of my abilities I'm trying to set the scene to make you feel what I felt when I felt it but I can't make you feel what we felt and his attempts to capture the same moment will yield very different results and inevitably the word Intense or impossible will be used to describe me when I actually see myself as somewhat passive and just a kid on this theme park ride that I never asked to go on this is why generally speaking two writers should never date and the exceptions are marvelous and the rest of us should stick to musicians but before I get too philosophical and lose all of you who are so kindly joining me tonight back to the answers that I give when I when asked why I and why we since I'm the only one I can answer for but I'm trying to give you some answers and we're losing you're learning that this is all right the rather confusing truth of writing why we write and not just write but write obsessively one we write because it makes even the most painful experiences matter sharing and connecting via shared truths makes the world feel just a little bit smaller it highlights what unites us and minimizes what divides us and I think we can all agree that we need that now more than ever I found that connection in talking about the fallibility of my body and my experience of medical trauma um and in this clip from my film sharp stick I use the monologue which is a form I love because it sort of allows Pros to slip onto the screen to tell a story that isn't my story but could have been so we'll take a look do you find me beautiful huh I hope these scars won't be an issue for you is so is Sergio hang on a second you you really don't need to do that I'm sorry if I uh gave you uh the the wrong impression or something but but listen you you don't in front of me beautiful I know I just I haven't I you know you you are yeah of course you are it's not that's not I'm still a virgin you know shut the [ __ ] up really wow huh it's crazy I just didn't really I mean that's great good for you that's something you should like protect and and no I don't want to be a virgin why because I'm 26. ah is there a joke come on and I like you me you're sensitive masculine proven by how you relate to your son you don't judge people from being different and you are such a good dancer and my mother says that means you'll be good in the sack gotta listen to your mom should never argue with Mom but please just keep that there I gotta tell you something Sarah Joe I'm I'm I'm I'm older than you and I know a few things and I promise you you do not want to lose your virginity to me I promise I'm like so I mean I'm I'm like a loser you know I'm not just saying this Sarah Joe I'm like grizzled and old and like my my body is I just trust me please you don't want this you you should find someone really nice you know find a hey find a nice guy like a nice a nice sir just like a nice boy who who's who's soft and treats you well like a [ __ ] dizzy Zac Efron I don't watch Disney well do you see these scars um Sarah Joe I do I do have these scars because I had a radical hysterectomy at 15. it was an emergency you don't have to be sorry you didn't do it my body was in pain one day it was it was in so much pain that I passed out in gym class and everyone was running over me to capture the flag when the doctors went in and when they went in everything was all stuck together like someone's a bit chewing gum in there and instead of having one uterus I had two very small ones with the ovary stuck into them nothing would have ever grown in there even if I tried maybe a little bit but it would have died before I was ever born so they took everything out and without puncturing my intestines because my mother said she wouldn't live with a child with a class to me back I don't I had menopause when I was 17 and I don't feel my age and I don't feel my body and so I'm just asking you for this favor for this one thing if you think I'm if you think I'm beautiful I do you think and then they have sex so the second reason we write because it allows us to make sense of the world and our place in it Being Human unfortunately does not come with a guidebook but we are slowly through the painstaking work of writers and artists everywhere starting to assemble one I first started making movies silly movies with my friends in college the first topic that I wanted to tackle was the female orgasm talk about Mystique so here's a little clip from a very homemade short film from about 2007 called pressure can I see a weird question sure um do you mind describing to me exactly what an orgasm feels like yeah have you had an idea no I've had a lot of them I mean like so you don't want me to put I just want to work with your words I mean I'm very orgasmic and have had a lot of them oh okay just hear words I just want to know what you would say I guess it's kind of like did all this build up ends like this release of pressure or something it's like almost hurts but then it's like you have to keep on hurting in order for it to like feel really good like sometimes you want to stop then keep on going and like when you keep on going and it's like this reward you know what I mean yeah kind of like when you sneeze it's like before you sneeze it's this like it's like this tingling and kind of burning shaking oh wait I don't sneeze very much I haven't sneezed since when I was a little kid I used to take my finger and waggle it around in my nose until I sneezed because I liked how it felt Disney that's really weird you guys are ridiculous number three we write to remember and hopefully to leave some piece of that memory after we go maybe just maybe a young woman in the year 21 22 will know that a person named Lena Dunham was here that she felt odd in her body and was scared of escalators and that she loved hairless animals and missed her grandmother desperately and wished to be a mother but was sure she'd be bad at it certain people will know about Lena Dunham maybe the same way that I know about Christine De piezon's feelings on educating Medieval women or Emily Dickinson anxiously refusing to leave her attic or Jenny diski's Brave marched toward death which she chronicled with clear-eyed Precision in the London Review of Books as if it was as basic as Julia Child's telling us how to make a cook of all wouldn't that be a wonder and it's okay to wish for that why does that the passing down of mundane truths from one century to the next Despite All Odds not qualify as an eighth wonder of the world number four we write to bring dark things to light and to fight for a world that is just a bit less cruel just a bit more just and hopefully to help along the slow but Perpetual Arc toward good or conversely if I'm in a negative headspace to hit the brakes on the Perpetual Arc toward bad in this clip from girls I was exploring what it means to be a young woman in an industry that has been marked by the stain of predation and to explain the confusion of wanting male attention but not wanting it that way I can't believe you have a signed copy of when she was good God everyone acts like this book is Philip Roth being the worst but it's actually him being the best and I know I'm not supposed to like him because he's like a misogynist he demeans women but I can't help but I [ __ ] love his writing you can't let politics dictate what you read or who you [ __ ] those are my roles write that down well do you want better I'll tattoo it on my body better I heard an alternate title for this book was American [ __ ] I have no idea if that's true can't find any proof on the internet but God if it is [ __ ] that's so good why don't you keep the Roth seriously yeah seriously I like how happy it makes you but it's side to you and everything God I hope someone writes a book about what a [ __ ] I am someday do you yeah obviously what would be better than to like ruin someone's life if you're wanting sex appeal and like icicle sharp intellect but I'm half Jewish I don't really see that happening for me you really are funny Hannah yeah you lie down with me for a moment just a moment and I'd encourage you to keep your clothes on to delineate any any boundaries that feel right to you I just want to feel close to someone in a way that I haven't in a long time if you please your bed smells like snacks I live alone lady I'm sorry I wrote something about you that um upset you so much without considering all the facts it's all right angry [Music] foreign [Music] I touched your dick you pulled your dick out and I touched your dick what and now it's still out you didn't even put it away I can see your dick it's right there hey Dad hi love hi honey [Music] oh my [ __ ] god [Music] you can just use that as a PSA for meetings from henceforth um number four we write to bring dark things to light and to fight for a world that is just number five we write to entertain nothing more nothing less but entertainment is in and of itself a worthy goal as is any goal that brings pleasure and in that way a writer is just another purveyor of Pleasures like a candy store owner or a dildo manufacturer Shakespeare knew this even if he was not familiar with the word dildo some of these answers are more altruistic some are more egotistic and all of these answers are true and all these answers are simplistic I'm like Dr Seuss because none of them convey the roiling need the insensible and Perpetual angst of the right release date there's no writer I know at least no writer who is writing who is not wrapped with the perception that when they're not telling stories they are worthless but that is living alongside a nagging fear that they don't have a story worth telling the only antidote to these anxieties is to write and the writing just creates more need the need to tell bigger and better stories each more well-constructed and essential than the next it seems to me that writers also write to fulfill a hope to stuff a gaping whole and in doing so they simply create another hole a deeper one onward and add infinitum until hopefully they die with a quill in their hand or in my case hunched over a MacBook Pro in pug printed pajamas with one paw on the keyboard and the other just stuffed in a stale bag of chips the fact that this to me is a state of unadulterated Bliss speaks to the bent heart and poor social skills that I believe are the mark of many writers yes kids you can have it all if in the process of a life of writing my canned answers can also be achieved the work can increase empathy and understanding leave a document of our world for those who come after us remind people of their moral duty to each other and also entertain then all the better but even if the act of writing only serves to keep life tolerable for the individual writer so that they remain on the planet that is enough why is that enough because we need writers to do all these other jobs that I just mentioned see it's a bit of a Ouroboros situation isn't it and that for those of you who are thinking what a pretentious bell end means snake eating its own tail and the only reason I know that is because I read the thesaurus obsessively when I was a child and then learned it was actually pronounced thesaurus and it's all very confusing nobody ever said writers were cool except I actually think that they are the coolest speaking in less general terms I am bad at almost everything I'll offer a very Abridged list here of things that I am not good at just to give you a sense which are walking renting a car two-step authentication cooking using revolving doors showing up on time assembling furniture from Ikea asking for what I need brushing my hair today someone else did it for me and confrontation I am also bad at math parties keeping track of my cousin's whereabouts in the world maintaining sensible hours and finding any address how did I get here I cannot honestly say but there are also a few things that I am good at eavesdropping asking questions remembering dialogue word for word film trivia speed reading imagining what it's like to be someone else being alone and thinking of ideas for things I recognize that under other circumstances I'd be a mostly housebound member of a pup quiz team but I am lucky enough that in this life there's actually a place for these skills you can be I have found myself as a writer let's back up a moment I did not enjoy childhood it is no fault of my parents who really tried to make it palatable but I was just frustrated constantly by how little people share with or listen to Children how was I supposed to make sense of a world where I was overhearing Snippets of information constantly but given absolutely no concrete tools to organize it when I was in the second grade A boy came into class and announced that he'd been watching the news and seen a woman who chopped off her husband's pee pee as you can imagine this raised more questions than it answered and my mind went wild trying to piece it all together when did she do it where what had she done with the aforementioned PP and could someone really live through something like that I badgered my teacher so incessantly that I somehow convinced her to give me a play-by-play of this very adult story that was dominating most news channels in America and she knew to her credit it was the only way to send me back to playing with blocks or whatever we were doing I wrote it down like I wrote down everything I heard in a journal where I also shared poems and novels which were really just short stories but nobody was taking me seriously enough to tell me the difference years later when I was in my 30s the woman in question Lorena Bobbitt went on the record talking about these events discussing the abuse that took place in her marriage that drove her to such drastic measures she wasn't just some crazy lady with access to Chef grade knives there was more to the story than we had understood and there always is sometimes you just have to wait for it and that's the way the unthinkable becomes thinkable all you have to do is listen from the moment I could write I found two things one was a place to understand the world around me which felt at the same time both too small and too large and if I could explain it to myself or distract myself with a story that spoke to the feelings I was unable to find mirrored in other people my age the same way Judy Bloom or LM Montgomery did for me I was comforted given a temporary rest bit from the anxiety that made my mostly patient parents lose their minds and occasionally storm out of the house to cool off from all these [ __ ] questions I also found a way to engage the peers who did not seem to understand me or vice versa and I now know with that waiting that you know after site that we talked about that I didn't make myself very easy to understand when I was sharing my stories it was the only time their attention looked anything like admiration I couldn't play sports I was too scared to have a sleepover I didn't dress well but I could Spin A Yarn that made them sit quiet at their desks heads bowed hanging on the tail of Orphan sisters in Victorian England or a little boy living in the ruins in New Delhi didn't matter that I knew nothing of these worlds and had never been to these places I had a sense that if I could see it in my mind's eye I could make it feel true and that sense has gotten me through the humiliations of high school the traumas of young adulthood the seemingly endless cruelties of living in a human body and here to bafta and that sounds pretty fancy to me my parents are both artists and they worked from home entering their Studios every morning to do that job by themselves they fulfilled that classic image of a brave artist wrestling with The Muse alone I was raised to think that was the way that we made art that creativity was a constant quest to get comfortable with Solitude and so when I decided I wanted to be a screenwriter and then a director I was unprepared for the irony that this thing I had learned to do in private was going to become a collaborative effort the idea that any art form was achieved by committees seemed counter-intuitive and possibly like cheating didn't accepting notes taking other people's ideas just make you some kind of half-baked fraud when I entered the writer's room for my first television show girls I was recalcitrin and constantly trying to escape saying things like I have something at four I named my limited liability corporation like a sweater because to me that's how writing felt as if you were crawling into the story like a sweater shoving your arms through the sleeves your head through the neck until you'd found the holes in your tail it was a process so intimate that I was more likely to strip nude in public something I did my fair share of my in my 20s and can recommend only with some caveats then share that process with others but as I succumb to the pleasures of sharing this space the ease of kicking around dangerously close to the line jokes the thrill of hitting on a better idea I came to realize that for me someone for whom socializing had come late and with certain difficulties these other writers were a gift The Writer's room was a call to listen to learn to show up with empathy and with a humble regard for the story Above All Else it offered me a chance to see inside others and let them see inside me I just heard that was that how that sounds it was different on the page and I felt honored to be part of a group that was working together to spin this tale A minor miracle if you've ever met a writer with an idea of their own to defend this clip from camping a show written with a writer's room and adapted from a work of Genius by Julia Davis England's own Julia Davis this was entirely created through the process of collaboration let's put this stuff down come on what I need your help getting some mattresses out of the other tents move so slow slow but steady no I need these mattresses for my back hard surfaces wreak havoc on my pelvic floor we already have our own mattresses three one three each member of our family I wouldn't call these mattresses call him pallets what were the other people use do you want me to have a dysfunctional pelvic floor at the whole of your birthday weekend is that what you want of course not honey well then hurry before the others get here hi big boy this isn't mommy stealing seems like it is but it's not then what is it it's for mommy's pelvic floor what's a pelvic floor it's the muscles in my pelvis that control my sphincture and the opening of my vagina I was here when I got here I guess it's for the Bears it's just babies can cause serious injuries do not point a gun at your father ever this show also taught me another valuable lesson that I will happily impart to you today which is that reviews only matter if they're good when I write a first draft be it of prose a television show or a screenplay I fly through it as if no one is watching it's like that song dances if no one is watching love as if you've never loved before only just stick it to writing um that's the delusion I have to labor under to access the honesty that I require of myself and admire in others but once I share it I really try and strip away ego and just make myself this loyal servant of the piece it's not about me even if it is technically About Me by suspending my own sense of the absolute I've learned to stop worrying and love the note notes that word every screenwriter seems to dread most probably because they're often met with a barrage of unanticipated comments that seem like death by many cuts to want to make their story into something it's not this feels like it could benefit from a comedy pass they say about a drama I'm wondering where the stakes are but who is Leslie what if we had a dragon we all know what it's like to get a note that sucks the air out of your lungs and makes you want to hurl yourself over your script like you're protecting your firstborn from a tsunami but what if we regarded notes as an interrogation of our work as choppy Waters testing our boat to see if it can Sail the notes don't have to contain the answer but they can ask a question and I think we are in the business of answering questions notes and collaboration are to me the Hallmarks of screenwriting of filmmaking and the thing about screenwriting is it's many ways the oddest forms since it's really to films what blueprints are to architecture yes it's fun to draw but don't we all want to walk around in the building and so we have to find a way to live in both worlds the Dreamscape that probably started us as writers in the first place and the world of yes consumerist desires practical compromises and lost lines that we are sure were destined to be classics we have to find a way to make the loss of control okay for ourselves and maybe even a part of the process I won't lie I started directing not because I was obsessed by Celluloid although I've gotten there but because I thought it gave me the best chance of sending my stories into the world in the Forum closest to the one I Envision When I close my eyes at night and inevitably dream in stories this is a clip from Tiny Furniture my first feature film which was made in my childhood home starring members of my family wheeled into being using the barest of means because I just didn't know how else to get the story told I know that you like to look at me since sometimes in the middle of the night I see you watching me well I don't see you but I See Your Shadow pooping back and forth in the square of yellow light that is your window not like you're going somewhere but like you're moving to move it's really beautiful whenever I write a poem I feel like someone with all these like feelings it's not too polony which I like I feel like every time I wrote a poem in college it was completely about virginity loss and I would also read it in this horrible voice like this is my slam poetry voice but if you liked it yeah I love your poem and I feel like you're now a complete shoe-in for every University you do everything you just want this massive prize I don't know they're totally willing to give admissions officers PJs with that yeah what's this costume can I ask you something I want to say yes but usually when you ask me if you can ask me something it's not something I want to be asked so have you Fosters I think you would probably know the answer to that question is that really something you need to ask me I don't know if I would know the answer to that question or tell me everything I think you would though I'm not answering a question like that that's if you keep asking me things like that I'm just gonna leave this bathroom and leave you to your shaving there's no reason for you to shrink everywhere there is because I'm not so over Sherry like you like I'm not just gonna go down into Mom's studio and be like Mom Candace like my heart is so broken and my vagina hurts so much wanting to protect stories is the same reason that I produce um and that's in order to try to um hold other storytellers that they can have the same experience of unfiltered expression that I have been lucky enough to have but remember how I said I also hate confrontation I really meant it and I really do believe that when a note comes in from a collaborator who I trust some of whom are even here tonight even if I don't agree with it immediately that I have enough creative bandwidth to find a solution that will work for us all I finally attempt to do that thrilling like winning at Scrabble yet another thing I'm bad at since it turns out it's really more about math than words I'm not sure that Orson Welles would give you that same advice or ingmar Bergman or Quentin Tarantino but have you ever tried being a 25 year old girl on a film set you are always two protests away from being called [ __ ] crazy so I learned to create compromise without compromising myself and I think it was the first of my adult skills and it's a way of life that I really believe in after all your writing lives or dies by the people that you work with actors producers Gaffers costume designers Caterers all of them are filmmakers too joining the circus family that really gets a movie made I want them to be thrilled with what we've done after we've done it just as I want to be thrilled I don't want to stand there manipulating them into saying a line that feels stupid and canned to them or creating a set that can't they can't be proud of just because my script said ugly green curtains or leave them feeling as though their voices don't matter I know what it is to feel that your voice doesn't matter and I also know what it is to find your voice and I just want us to find our voices together that may sound pollyanna-ish like a utopian Vision that doesn't actually account for the sician process that I know is getting a movie made and it looks different for everyone but there is a reason that we all started on this journey because we had something to say and we wanted to say it through the moving image and we are lucky enough to make believe on a daily basis and that is crazy and I say this to my collaborators all the time you know some people go into the mines or save lives in covet Wards or stand on Battle lines and what we do is important but we also tell stories and play dress up and it's very serious but it's also very not and so I just like to keep that in perspective when people are ready to throw down this life is not too short for a lot of things it's not too short to fight for what's right in your community it's not too short to protect your family and friends from harm it's not too short to demand space for different voices to be heard ones that exist outside that CIS white male dominance that was the 20th century in cinema but life is most definitely too short to demand that a mortified actor utter the line yo you like shrooms what a sweet sweet hi just because you heard it at a party once the other thing that I like about making movies besides the sense of community it Fosters because it really is like summer camp for grown-ups is the fact that I am a Perpetual student I was not a good academic I love how this lecture is just about things that I am bad at and was bad at and I'm still bad at in any sense of the word I would obsessively prepare my notebook place my pencils in their beautiful shiny new case fetishize the glamor of walking around with a stack of textbooks pressed to my chest like the kids on 90210 only to finish out my first week of school with a backpack that looked like a family of badgers had nested there and a binder that exclusively contained overheard facts about my fellow students I still remember my seat mate in seventh grade history class an upsettingly upsettingly flexible boy named David who often sat with one leg behind his head telling me he was racing home to see his cat Shadow who had been suffering from diabetes Shadow has diabetes not long to live I scrawled in all caps pretending I was taking notes on Napoleon's Revolution Life as a writer has offered me a do-over the Pursuits of a student but played out in a way that complements my let's just say unique brain chemistry I have the chance to immerse myself in topics of meaning to me but I can approach the Medieval World with the passion of a child of the internet Googling facts about feudal menstruation and courtly sleep habits sleep habits is obviously code for sex conversely I can approach non-academic topics like the shadow war between two Instagram influencers with the level of theory that I think it deserves using Susan Sontag as my guide the strictures of Scholastic life which let's face it have been largely defined by dudes are lifted as I take an auto didax approach to becoming a person that I would want to know full of random knowledge and bubbling passions that push me to get out of bed every morning I think even gossip becomes an education I also continue to learn from my mentors people like Judd Apatow Nora Ephron Amy Pascal Tim Bevin and Eric felner who offer me the fruits of a life that has been lived telling stories and they pushed me to dig deeper and to relent to certain common laws of Storytelling such as the three acts I was so resistant to in my earlier work that really do create a stable structure on which we can kind of hang our experiment they also advise me truthfully on how to navigate the bruised Egos and constant glad handing of a business that turns art into Commerce and they allow me to try fail and try again on the last day of filming Catherine called birdie our producer Tim turned to me and said I really didn't think we would get here I was shocked he'd hidden it for me so well sometimes you just need someone to lie to you we all need a little bit of [ __ ] to survive something I'm still learning is to calm myself on my own [ __ ] to isolate the tropes that I use when I'm being lazy in my work and to demand more of myself an example is that for a long time I was very devoted to the idea of unlikable characters I think it was partly political I was enraged that people seem to be more frustrated with whiny [ __ ] girls on TV than they were with actual Hitmen and predators and I wanted to live in a world where a woman could behave just as badly as a man at least in the movies but it also came from a fear as deep and old as I was that I didn't know how to make somebody lovable to try and fail to win empathy from an audience would mean that I was lacking in something essential myself you couldn't fail to Target their heartstrings if you didn't pluck them at all when writing Catherine called birdie I pushed myself and was really pushed by my incredible genius collaborator Andrew Scott to find a way to be emotional without being cheesy and to be sincere without being sentimental come on did I hear you you're just giving up we have tried all there is to try the babies to date within us all of you in the name shut up Midwife you will stay and you will not sleep until our baby is delivered fourth Century I will not lose I'm not I'm not a child excuse me and I will not lose my holy wife do you understand me do you understand me yes no thank you we don't need you get up get out and don't come back go get some more boiling water and some more rugs add some butter am I brave beautiful darling look at me it was look at me you are so strong if this is pooped it's meant to be anything I ask you short answer when they're placed in this world just just anyways yeah please foreign I want to make you laugh and make you leave and I'm not gonna live in a world where our children's children don't get to make you long when they tumble in the grass in front of us when we were old huh can you try if you try then I'll try it don't stand idle please get a doctor get a doctor get two doctors oh you're so strong yes [Music] [Applause] well if crying at your own work is a crime then haul me off to prison being that writing hopeful people and happy endings scared me but writing is also about going to places that scare you sometimes those places are literal like a Serial Killer's Den or a new world war and other times it's just about letting go of your sense of who you are and who you can be and behaving in writing as you cannot or could not in the world in that way we write ourselves to a kind of Freedom that we will not know otherwise the process is unending and it's captivating and I want to die doing it but I wish I could read what came after my parents always said that there are no bad thoughts only bad actions to that end I believe writing is a place to process the things we do not know how to process that we know not to do in the world to say the things that we're scared to say at parties writing is imbued with meaning but like weird dreams that leave us embarrassed we can't make too much meaning of it artists have to be free in their work to be fuck-ups and [ __ ] and Nightmares as long as they are not doing it in the world I really do think writing saves us from a Litany of social misdeed since we have a place to enact the things that we know are wrong and we are all fascinated by what's wrong and we have to investigate it in order to know what's right let artists behave badly on the page and encourage people to behave With Honor in the world the other question I often get when I talk to young people who are studying film is how do you find your topic it's easy to become overwhelmed both by the melee of stories we hear every day in the sense that we have to fit our work to fit the needs of a Fickle business but I often say because I really do believe it that the topics closest to us will resonate the most deeply with others the personal is political the personal is universal the more specific you get the more likely your work will speak to someone else when you dull your edges and quiet your truth what you end up with may find an audience but it won't find its audience I would rather speak to 20 people who speak back than a million people who shrug and maybe that's naive but I would prefer to stay naive for many of us film is a religion books to the written word at its best is our higher power and it's really the only God that I've ever known I don't discount any experience physical hardship loss being scammed by a kitten rescue on the internet that's actually a few dudes in New Orleans looking for my credit card information as long as it translates to a story I can tell or even better a story I can hear I don't judge the medium I've been bored to Tears by movies and moved to Tears by message boards as long as the writer is on a quest for truth sometimes fiction can actually be more true than life itself I'm sure you all know that feeling an episode of Television So Divine that you see your living room differently a film's so perfect that you watch through the credits and then call your mom a novel so good it makes you want to write I guess the biggest piece of advice and I know that you guys didn't ask for advice I have saved for last and it's annoyingly simple and it's far too much of a command I don't want to tell you what to do but I know it works so I'll say it as plainly as I can just write keep on writing thank you foreign

Channel: BAFTA

Views: 22,644

Keywords: bafta, Lena Dunham, girls, screenwriter, director, comedy, comedian, female comedian, actress, female actress, women writers, women directors, women in comedy, catherine called birdy, bella ramsay

Id: 9ZWv3jp2udk

Length: 42min 51sec (2571 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 23 2023