Kenneth Lonergan Talks Opening Sequence Of ‘Manchester By The Sea’, Why Writers Must Protect Their Individuality & What’s Next — Storyhouse

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“I’ve made a living doing rewrites for other people and writing scripts for other people, but I’ve only made three films for myself, and I made them under the conditions that I would have as complete creative control as was possible,” Kenneth Lonergan told a group of budding writers at Dublin’s screenwriting festival Storyhouse.

The Manchester by the Sea and You Can Count on Me filmmaker imparted his advice about how to carve a screenwriting career in the film business during a lengthy keynote conversation with Room and Frank director Lenny Abrahamson.  “In my case, I had to have protectors who were more powerful than I was.

But I found them and got them and secured them and made sure that they could protect me. And one out of three times they were unable to protect me – I went through a lot of trouble in my second film, trying to keep the film where I wanted it.

But they will change the script and fire you and cast people you don’t like if you don’t have some contractual say over these processes.” When probed about the current state of the film industry, Lonergan said he pined for the type of bold filmmaking that existed in the 1970s. “I was brought up on very good movies, which I’m sorry to say, is not the case with the average movie going person since then. “The general quality was through the roof compared to any time since then.