Introduction

This chapter offers a new and multi-faceted reading of screenwriting and of creative labor and explains a series of explicit analytical connections between screenwriting, creative labor and what has been termed the ‘new cultural economy’. Screenwriting as creative labor is an instructive case study precisely because it problematizes notions of creativity, craft and authorship as they are practiced and experienced. Screenwriting within the mainstream Hollywood and British film industries in the contemporary moment demands complex forms of subjectivity in order to distinguish it from other forms of filmmaking and writing, and to make the work knowable and do-able. The chapter argues for the importance of considering screen-writing as creative labor, but what consequences might the foregrounding of the term ‘creative’ have for this kind of study? It focuses on the connections between creativity and craft and individual and collaborative work practice, the inclusions and exclusions that frame and determine screenwriting work are another key orientation.