Wodehouse on Screenwriting

Here's some consolation for The Wunderfool from a wildly successful novelist who lived for some time in Hollywood in the 1930s, getting paid $1,500 a week to tinker around with screenplays. He asked novelist Claude Houghton:

Have you ever done any picture work? It is quite interesting, but I hate having to condense my dialogue as one has to do. I can't seem to get used to writing a couple of lines for a scene between two characers, where in a novel you would be able to extend yourself to a page or so.

Having spent the last three years trying to make the transition from novels to screenplays, I can confess that it is painful.