Oscar nominees in conversation

In The LA Times, J.A. Fernandez talks to the writers nominated for this year's Original Screenplay Oscar.

There has been talk of a "crisis" in storytelling. Now that the types of stories you've all told in these scripts are being honored, do you feel that there is greater hope?

ARRIAGA: I think that the capacity of fictionalizing life is diminishing. It's less and less and less, because we are losing our inner life. We are losing our capacity of dialogue, of understanding human beings. We are more and more alienated, and the more alienated a society is the more difficult it is to fictionalize something.

DEL TORO: I think that the problem you have with the screenplay is a particular problem of the form. When you toil on a screenplay, you come out with a document that most people refuse to read. It's not an easy form to write or to read. I think there are millions of stories, but the people that can tell them are choosing other forms.

YAMASHITA: I think the problem is also the system, because the studio system encourages the nonoriginal. Everything is an adaptation or something that they're familiar with, and you come up with something that they're unfamiliar with and they don't know what to do with it.

MORGAN: I don't know why we're all so down on ourselves. I don't think it's so bad. I don't think there are many good directors — why don't we talk about that?
[Everyone laughs]