For 25 years,he was among the very best directors working in Hollywood. While Weir was nominated six times for an Oscar before he retired,there are understandable reasons he didn’t win any of them.
Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis in Witness,which won Oscars for best editing and original screenplay.Paramount
The four times he was up for best director - forWitness,Dead Poets Society,The Truman Show andMaster and Commander:The Far Side of the World - he ran into hot competition. Namely Sydney Pollack (Out OfAfrica),Oliver Stone(Born On The Fourth Of July),Steven Spielberg(Saving Private Ryan)and Peter Jackson(The Lord of the Rings:The Return of the King).
Nominated as the writer ofGreen Card,the Oscar went to Bruce Joel Rubin forGhost;and up for best picture as a producer ofMaster and Commander,The Return of the King won again.
But there is another time that Weir should have won,but didn’t even get a nomination.
He deserved to share the screenwriting Oscar thatWitnesswon for Americans William Kelley,Earl W. Wallace and,for the story,Pamela Wallace.
The film centres on a tough city cop John Book (Harrison Ford) who holes up in an Amish community,falling for young widow Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis),while investigating a murder witnessed by her son (Lukas Haas).
The day before the Oscar nominations,Kelley was in Sydney as writer and co-producer of the truly awful telemovieThe Blue Lightning,which had Sam Elliott as an American detective investigating the theft of an expensive opal in Australia.
On that set,Kelley was keen to “set the record straight” aboutWitness in Weir’s home city.
Even though the film had been a critical and commercial success,he was still upset about what he claimed was a bid by the director to share the screenwriting credit. He said he and Wallace had fought hard to keep their script from being changed drastically and that “93 per cent” of what was shot was down to them and the other 7 per cent was mainly location adaptations.
Harrison Ford in Sydney in 1985 to promote Witness,with director Peter Weir in the background.Fairfax
Weir was shootingThe Mosquito Coast in Belize at the time so was unable to contest the claim.
In his in Los Angeles,Weir mentioned the repercussions when he decided to cut the dialogue from the climactic scene inWitness - Book having a last moment with Rachel before leaving the Amish community - so he could tell the story through images rather than words.
“Either she had to go with him or he had to stay - they had to part,” Weir said. “There were two pages of dialogue ... I just pulled them out of the script. I said ‘it’s got to be all done with looks. If the audience doesn’t understand the thing by now,they never will’.”
Producer Ed Feldman told Weir he couldn’t do that because he’d signed off on the script but the director stayed firm. Over dinner,Paramount boss Jeffrey Katzenberg suggested Weir shoot the scenes even if he didn’t plan to use them.
Lukas Haas,Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford in Witness.Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images
But,when Weir thought this was a lousy idea,Katzenberg suggested he tell him the story of the script’s final two pages,in images. Weir said at the awards that he did exactly that and Katzenberg’s response was “sounds good,go ahead”.
If you watchWitness now,that scene is three minutes of cinematic genius – brilliantly shot,acted and scored. Book is outside Rachel’s front door,in a modern city suit,the road stretching out behind him in colour. Rachel is inside,in traditional black-and-white Amish dress,an interior light behind her. They turn away,look back,then both know that,despite everything they feel,he has to leave.
The deep emotions reflect an impossible clash between the violent modern world and a cloistered rural community that rejects violence.
There are other scenes inWitness where the sensitivity of the direction elevates the material with images rather than words,notably when Book joins the Amish to build a barn and when he and Rachel dance.
It’s hard to see anything in Kelley and Wallace’s filmographies,filled with TV shows and undistinguished telemovies,that come anywhere near the quality ofWitness.
So either their script was a one-off outlier in their careers - they have both since died - or Weir helped turn their script into something special.
And this was a writer-director who,as well as writing the Oscar-nominatedGreen Card,co-wrote such films asThe Cars That Ate Paris,The Year Of Living Dangerously,Master and Commander andThe Way Back.
The script forWitness - it’s easy to find online - really does read just like Weir telling Katzenberg the story through images.
To be fair to the writers,they must have felt were fighting the Hollywood system in their only major film and directors rewriting years of work must be galling. But,in this case,Weir deserved to share their Oscar.
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Email Garry Maddox at gmaddox@smh.com.au and follow him on Twitter at @gmaddox.
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