That bit with Hitchcock and Marnie, where he advises her on the wedding scene, certainly complements your "writing visually" posts from last week. It's something I've failed to do from day one, always terminally linear about my scenes, to my own detriment and certainly to the detriment of my scripts.

A nice byproduct is when you do transpose your paint-by-numbers scenes into visual swatches, a strange magic actually does happen and it's all ultimately quite satisfying.

Great interview. It's always interesting to read about development and production problems, even dating back to the 50s. The same stuff still goes on today.

I was impressed with her stance on structure over emotion. Seems much like life, some will take the rationally driven approach while others will take an emotional approach.. and in the end we all have to try and work it out, yet there is much crash and burn.

@Jeff: I zeroed in on that anecdote as a definite takeaway from this interview.

@Peter Dwight: And to your point, here is a quote from screenwriter Jeffrey Boam in which he extols emotion over structure.

well put scott (and Boam). It makes me wonder. I obviously try to get a balance, but if anything ruins a movie for me, it's weak structure or plot holes. I write for the emotion in certain scenes, but overall and first things first for me is always structure. Hopefully I can learn to not lose emotion just for the sake of a structure sometimes.

I wonder if she had any training to write a play because it seems so unreal to me that she just one day taught 'let me write a play' without any connection to writing plays. Where did she learn her craft?