MORGAN: They're choosing music and possible locations, you're choosing human beings, story, tone.

DEL TORO: But hold on. It's as simple as this: When you're married and have kids, and your kid [messes] up, you say, "Your kid." When the kid wins an honor at school: "My kid." It's the same thing. We hit birth together, like that, and it's horrible that somebody celebrates one side of the genetic makeup only.

ARRIAGA: I cannot agree more with you.

DEL TORO: What we do is something where people should not lose time trying to trace the lineage, they should accept it as a great creation or not, and that's it. We did it, and that's the end of it. It's such a beautiful, messy, anarchic orchestration of a birth of a piece that I truly think that's the joy of it. People think that film is all about control. Film is about control and losing control -- it's a mixture. I think most of the people that created the devaluation of the writer come from a producer-ial background. I think if you track the history of what happened, it's the people that treat a story like an assembly line. . . . In an assembly line, there is no real pride of authorship.

ARNDT: Speaking of pride of authorship, let me qualify my remarks and just say that when I hold my screenplay in my hand, and I look at it and I read through it, I feel that's mine, that is my screenplay. When I see the movie up on the screen, I don't feel like it's my movie. I feel like Jonathan and Valerie were the ones who went out and shot it, they edited it, they cast it, they used the music, and so I don't feel like I can take that sense of ownership for the movie myself. I'm a writer, I'm a control freak, I can only control what's on the page. So when I hold the script in my hand it feels like mine, it feels like something that I gave birth to. The movie feels like the end product of another process.

DEL TORO: But it's your particular take.

ARRIAGA: But you are giving part of the film also. You're giving the world, you're giving the tone, you're giving the structure, you're creating the characters.

YAMASHITA: Maybe also what Michael might be saying is that you could write this tremendously wonderful screenplay, but with the wrong director, it could --

ARNDT: It could be a disaster.

Just to play devil's advocate, you could argue that the choice of director on a film actually ends up affecting the voting on the writing awards -- that if they don't match the right director(s), you may not be sitting here.

ARNDT: Completely. That is the most critical contribution.

ARRIAGA: No one is denying the importance of the director. Of course it's important. I think that Alejandro's a great director, I think he's extremely talented, and I'm very fortunate to have a guy like him. But that doesn't make necessarily a film only by the director.

DEL TORO: But even the benign function of the producer, which is amazing when you have somebody, let's say, Michael Douglas, "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" -- I grab this screenplay, I find Milos Forman, I say, "Hey, what about this?" Fantastic. Beautiful. And now will we argue about it being a producer's medium? Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. What is horrible is that any generalization in favor of any of the camps -- any of them -- is obscene. It never lends itself to wisdom. No matter what your particular experience has been, you can't generalize. And you know what? Sometimes a film, like "Gone With the Wind" or "Casablanca," is a lot of people's film. And it's still a great film. But I wish more people published screenplays.

ARRIAGA: I'm proposing something: to publish the screenplays before making the film. . Here's another thought: What if in voting on the best screenplay categories, people had to see the film and read the screenplay?

ARRIAGA: Yes! Perfect. That would be great.

DEL TORO: I think that if you're voting for best picture -- like you do with Fforeign Ffilm, where you have to prove that you saw the five films in the theater -- you should prove that you saw the movie and read the screenplay. Because I tell you this, I'm a writer-director, so I play in both camps -- and I'm a producer, so I play in the three camps. But sometimes I wish they published screenplays that have never been made. The percentage of screenplays that have been published on films that did not get made is like .002%. "The Monk," by [Luis] Buñuel and [Jean-Claude] Carrière, "I, Robot," by Harlan Ellison based on Isaac Asimov, "The Doctor and the Devils," [by Ronald Harwood, based on Dylan Thomas], the movie that eventually got made -- sometimes you'll read those screenplays and they are perfect pieces. Sometimes as complete as you could imagine. But it's an accursed literary form. . What do you think of the screenwriter-centric Academy Awards PR campaign? Have you seen the billboards and posters?

ARNDT: I'm very happy.

DEL TORO: I like it, man. I feel that it should have been like that all the time.

MORGAN: How about this, though: four out of the five best-picture nominees -- original screenplays. And the fifth, an adaptation based on an original screenplay. I think that's amazing. I really love that. . Tell the truth: the acceptance speech -- do you write a finely crafted 45-second speech in Final Draft or do you wing it?

DEL TORO: Sincerely? Nothing. I think that it works against you, like in talk shows, if you go in trying to be smart. It's tragic.

MORGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree.

DEL TORO: You just go there, be yourself, feel what you feel, thank who you remember to thank -- or not -- and get the hell out of there. I think that if you write something really clever and you polish it for five weeks, more likely than not it will explode in your face when you get there. [laughs]

ARRIAGA: I think the best thing is to have a prepared improvised speech.

Fernandez writes the weekly Scriptland column, a feature on the work and professional lives of screenwriters. For tips and comments, e-mail fernandez_jay@hotmail.com.