Moviemaking For 8 Year Olds

Considering that he was ahead of me in the chute, I have no idea how he came in as being 16 seconds behind me.

But don't you think this is why we get such patronizing crap in our movie theatres and on our tv screens?

Well, I think we've always gotten patronizing crap, whether in movie theatres or on TV or in our books or in our plays or... I am oft reminded of Sturgeon's Law, which is that 94% of everything is crap. (I like 94% rather than the usually quoted 90%, because the more exact the figure, the more likely it is that people will believe that it's true. Try it out some time--it really works, even on the most ridiculous statistic you can think up.)

I responded to her that

Well, probably. I don't know. People as individuals are usually quite smart; people as audiences are usually quite dumb.

I do know that one of the biggest sins that we all committed in our writing was subtlety. We'd write something that we'd think was really, really subtle, and everyone in the class would say, What the hell did *that* mean? If our fellow writers couldn't follow it, readers coming to it out of the blue probably wouldn't at all.

I didn't know what to make of this guy, though--maybe he just thought we'd all enjoy how clever he was being, figuring this stuff out.

It's an interesting question though. I have to think it over some more.

Which wasn't, let's say, one of my finer (or more reasoned--I think I was a wee bit exhausted from the race) responses. It is an interesting question though, one I want to think about a little more, out loud.

Amount Of Product Required

One of the problems with the entertainment industry these days is that there are so many outlets for product--dramatic shows, sitcoms, cable, movies, infotainment. There's a reason that there are 46 hours of Dateline a week--it's cheap, the stories change rather quickly, and you don't have to pay a stable of writers to think up something completely new and different every week.

The number of hours per week in TV that require stories makes it really, really, really hard--if not completely impossible--to come up with a truly original story. This is why both Law and Order and Homicide do subway bombing stories, albeit with a totally different slant and style--it's topical, it's in the news, no one had to think it up.

TV

There's a current belief that the writing on TV is much better, as a rule, than it is in the movies. I think that's true...only because there's so much more of TV, and in TV writers are gods--they run the show.

Television introduces us to characters, invites us to know them week after week, slowly unfold their tics and habits and backstory before us.

TV's physical limits make it a better medium for character stories rather than detail work. The TV screen is built for the closeup, where we see our friends up close and personal. You can't see the details of a vista shot in VistaVision all that well.

One of the big changes that The X-Files and Homicide have given us is a sense of movie-quality visual style. The X-Files has its trademark dark colors and scenes shot in shadow, which is very risky and off-putting for TV. Homicide gives us jump cuts, handheld cameras, and unusual framing and angles. Television cinematography has grown immensely in the past 10 years.

Movies

In movies, because there's a much, much bigger monetary investment, the producers run things, and it's easier to get rid of the writer--the one who's come up with the script, the reason that everyone's there--than to get rid of the star, the one who will put fannies in the seats and sell the videos, or the director.

Because we watch so many personal stories, day in and day out, on television the need for close-knit, heartfelt stories on the big screen is not quite what it was. The big screen has had to offer us what's different, what we can't get at home on TV, at least on non-pay-TV:

• nudity

• language: we all know that language is a lot rougher at our movieplex than on Homicide, no matter how homicide detectives really talk

• special effects: although these have come to the small screen on Babylon 5 and Buffy, it's not quite the same thing as the full screen experience of the Imperial warship flying overhead, or an asteroid destroying New York City

• better sound and vision: few of us have at home the body-shaking experience of THX sound in a quality theatre, and TV cannot, because of physical limitations, match the color and light range of film, which is why that film that looked great in the theatre looks like crap at home

• action: most TV producers can't afford to blow things up every week

There are some topics that movies can cover than TV can't, at least not directly. Independent movies, at any rate; the major studios have to worry about recouping their investment, and you can't spend a lot of money on a film that 3 or 4 people are going to go see. It's not how you run your personal finances, and it's not how the studios are going to run theirs.

Lots of people point out that if Hollywood made 10-20 million flicks instead of 2-100 million dollar ones, that more stories could be told. Well, yeah...except Hollywood is making too many movies as it is right now (how many movies have you seen recently?) and no one's going to see those. They need to drag people in for the big budget spectacle angle, not the dark, personal, intimate angle.

Movies also introduce characters that we will meet for the first time, tell their story, and then get rid of them. In movies, you don't have time to stand around and do "character stuff." You only have 2 hours--demonstrate what the character is like as the story unfolds.

I'm left with the question: what is patronizing crap? For example, I hated Lost In Space, and the two gentlemen I was with--Darin and Mike--liked it.

25 years ago, according to the book Easy Riders Raging Bulls : How the Sex-Drugs-And-Rock-'N'-Roll Generation Saved Hollywood (which I am currently reading and enjoy highly), Chinatown was considered a boring, pretentious movie. These days it's regarded as one of the finest films ever made.

Nobody knows, folks. It's totally a matter of taste. Here's some of mine:

• I hated Batman and its offspring. By the last one, Batman and Robin, I turned off the internal analyst and let the images flow by.

• I thought Independence Day was grating and I hoped the aliens would kick everyone's ass good, even if Jeff Goldblum did use a Macintosh Powerbook. I know Godzilla is going to suck. Emmerich and Devlin blow things up real good, but they don't know how to tell a story.

• I loved The Devil's Advocate (just to show you I like studio pictures).

I leave it to you, folks: what do you think is patronizing crap? What do you hate about movies and TV today? When was the last time your intelligence was insulted, and how? Or better yet, when was the last time you felt complimented by a film, enjoyed its subtlety, felt that it was worthy of your intelligence?

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics

3.5 ouchy miles today. But I'm glad I did them.

I also did about 15 pages in the Rewrite Script. I rewrote one of the key scenes, which had been bothering me, and I think it's way better now. I still have to finish the damn thing--I know how I want it to end; I have to figure out the mechanics thereof. Discovering the precise nature of those mechanics has driven me into paroxysms of agony.