Julius Epstein on genre films

 Jeffrey St. Clair

+ Screenwriter Julius Epstein (Casablanca, Arsenic and Old Lace, Pete n Tillie, Mrs Skeffington) on genre films: “I detest science fiction. I thought Star Wars was a big bore and the sequels I didn’t even bother to go see. I just don’t believe there’s anybody out there in space. ET, I thought, was one of the biggest bores of all time. I was bored from the first frame until the last. ET itself was one of the dullest characters ever. He never said anything of consequence. He had no humor. Nothing. He was made up to look like Menachim Begin. With as much humor. I hate Westerns, too. I’m an Easterner. I think all the stories about the West are probably full of shit.”

Epstein’s observation on Hollywood genre films comes from a really funny interview in the first volume of Backstory, a collection of conversations with screenwriters of the 30s and 40s. Epstein, who wrote and doctored hundreds of scrips with his brother Philip, described his working day as “writing from 12 to 2.” He tried to write three good pages. It took him 4 to 6 weeks to produce a complete script. In a career that spanned 50 years (from 1934’s Twenty Million Sweethearts to Reuben, Reuben in 1983), most of his work was uncredited. Epstein said he didn’t mind because most of the Hollywood films were crap and credit only mattered for screenwriters after the collapse of the studio contract system, when screenwriters could earn money off of residuals. He said he and his brother came up with ending for Casablanca while in a traffic jam at the intersection of Beverly Glen and Sunset. I’ve spent motionless hours at that same spot without inspiration striking…He considered the film a fairly standard war flick, which his children later forced him to seek credit for…