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Working closely with Lean, Bolt produced a screenplay that, more to the director's liking, explored Lawrence , s enigmatic personality, but which also drew heavily upon the way Michael Wilson had structured the film. Bolt began his work on the screenplay in January and by April had completed the first half of the script, enabling Lean to begin shooting the film on desert locations in Jordan the following month. Bolt continued frantically to work on the remainder of the screenplay but the film was eventually forced to shut down production at the end of September-largely due to the lack of a completed script-and was able to resume shooting only in mid-December in Spain.
The following year, as the shooting neared completion, Wilson learned he would not receive a screen credit for his contribution. In violation of the Screen Writers' Guild's established procedures for determination of credits, Wilson was not told Bolt had been hired to replace him nor was he given a copy of the final shooting script. He was unable to secure a copy until production of the film was nearly completed in November 1962. He then wrote to Spiegel, requesting joint listing in the film credits on the basis that Bolt had retained the structure of his earlier work and "most of my inventions."
I received from you a copy of the shooting script of Lawrence of Arabia. I read it with interest and have studied it with care.
It is clear at once that little of my dialog remains in this screenplay, certainly less than 10%. 1 assume that the dialog was written by Robert Bolt, and through you I must congratulate him on a Job well done. He is a gifted man. If screen credit were determined on the basis of dialog alone, I could not claim recognition for this picture.
However, more goes into the writing of a motion picture than the spoken word. Structure, selection, continuity, plot, invention and characterization-all these factors form and define the final product we see and hear. These factors are of special importance in a biographical or historical subject as vast, complex, and controversial as this one. Permit me to summarize what I feel my contributions to be:
The overall structure of the shooting script is mine. This is easily proven, if one traces the course of development in my work from the time I wrote the first tentative outline to the moment when I completed the third draft screenplay. The selection of the material to be dramatized was also made by me.
From the millions of words written by or about Lawrence, we could glean only a minor fraction of the events in his life that might have been dramatized, and I made all the basic choices. To some people, selection may seem a simple task; to the few like yourself, who know the history of this project, it must surely be remembered as the most arduous phase of the writing process.
The continuity-by which I mean plot detail and the progression of scenes-remains my continuity. It is true that certain of my scenes have been deleted and other new scenes added-but this in no way affects the arc of development, the general story line, the points of climax or the dramatic goals. If one were to engage 100 writers or 100 chimpanzees-to write a film about Lawrence, one would get 100 different screenplays.
Why, then, is the screenplay attributed to Mr. Bolt so much like mine, to a degree that it virtually coincides with mine in terms of continuity? The story that Robert Bolt tells is the story that I told. He has chosen different words with which to tell it.
Most of my inventions have been retained in the shooting script, and this fact is of particular significance. By inventions I mean incidents, situations and events which are not to be found in Seven Pillars of Wisdom or any other work about Lawrence-in other words, fictions created by me the better to dramatize this particular film
I could cite-and will, if necessary-a dozen or more such fictions which contribute importantly to story progression or character revelation. There isn't one chance in a 1000 that another writer could have independently created the same fictions...
I have been told that Mr. Bolt has never read my screenplay. I am prepared to believe this strange assertion. But if it is so, then certainly he must have been carefully briefed on its shape and content, as a junior officer would be briefed by his commander on a battle plan.
Perhaps my screenplay was recited to him, in paraphrase. I mean this literally. There is no other way to explain his having used my approach, my construction, my objectives, my characterizations-not to mention my inventions. It is as if my ideas, concepts and insights had been filtered through the prism of another man's consciousness, to emerge in a different style and in different words. Truly, my work has been altered. But my blueprint has been used-even if the interior decorator has changed the furnishings, the drapes and the color of the walls.9
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