You Mean Movies Have Writers?

“In the movie world, writers are rarely treated with respect. Far from being considered sacred text, their words are routinely trampled on through endless script drafts, rewrites and ‘final polishes.'” But at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, an astonishing number of well-known authors and novelists are among the list of screenwriters, and Martin Knelman hopes that the star power of such writers as Barbara Gowdy and Mordecai Richler will lead to a sea change in the way the film world views the people who write the scripts.