The eyes of the beholder: does responsibility for the lack of quality screenplays really lie at the door of inadequately trained screenwriters?

Abstract

The relative lack of success for British films in the marketplace is often cited as being rooted in the lack of quality screenplays. As the primary strategic body for film in Britain, the UK Film Council subscribes to this broad analysis and has identified training as one of the key strategies for overcoming this weakness. In this article, I question this assumption and examine to what extent the decision-makers, and the processes of decision-making, themselves are a problem in the development of talent and quality British films.