How did William Faulkner arrive in Hollywood?
JB: He was asked to do a script for a short story of his called “Turn About” that Howard Hawks made into a film. Of course, in the early 30s, particularly with his novel Sanctuary, he got a lot of attention and was liked very much by Hawks. He began doing scripts in large part because he needed money. Was Hawks the primary reason that Faulkner made his way out there? Pretty much so. Did they work closely or did Hawks ask Faulkner to write and then re-work the script submitted? Yes to both. He liked Faulkner’s work which he based his films on, but he also knew he wasn’t an expert at it. Faulkner tried to teach himself the techniques of screenwriting as he went along, but the thing that Hawks valued in Faulkner was his fertility of invention, his capacity for ideas. Faulkner had a propensity to write page after page of dialogue that was ultimately unusable. I think Humphrey Bogart once remarked about some of his scripted dialogue, “I’m supposed to say all that?” Didn’t much of his script
