Patronizing Crap Redux

Well, one thing's for sure: y'all feel that there's some patronizing crap out there in your local moviehouses.

Another Diane (from Australia) writes in to say:

I go to the movies to feel. The movies I go to see I rate on how strongly they affected me emotionally.

Sad to say, sometimes these big blockbuster movies they grind out of HW these days are guilty of moving me immensely. I'm a weeper. Titanic had me sobbing. Independence Day had me cheering. (Even though after the movie I joked about the sad USA self congratulation). Casino had me mesmerised. And Star Trek takes me away to a place I'd rather be....Sad isn't it.

I seem to jump right into the world the director is trying to create and go - Yes, I believe you.

As for movies that have insulted me. I generally see a movie every couple of weeks and have become pretty good at picking the duds. I refuse to pay A$30 to go see a bad movie. However - Dumb and Dumber was a waste of celluloid. Striptease was pathetic (except for George Bush).

TV wise, I generally watch as much Home Grown stuff as I can and only watch X-Files in the USA list, and the kids watch Zena and Hercules (anything good made in New Zealand gets claimed by us anyway). We make some decent comedy here that isn't as slapstick as yours and not quite as dry as the British. Our drama is developing (ignoring the pathetic teenage shows) and is quite relevant and it is a bit more relaxed, (dare I say not as pretentious).

Diane hits on a very interesting point here: we go to the movies to feel. It's always about emotion--movies fail when they bypass the emotions altogether, presenting us with characters with whom we can't identify. Often in these big budget spectaculars we meet characters who never fail, are never in jeopardy, do everything well, and have no reactions whatsoever to what's going on. They're not much of a stand-in for the audience, most of whom know they'd be in a coma as a result of this kind of action.

You can find a good discussion on how to make your characters empathetic and sympathetic in Michael Hauge's Writing Screenplays That Sell.

Charles writes in to tell me:

What I hate the most about movies today is that I can fiqure out the ending 25 minuetes into the damn things, hasn't anyone ever heard of ORIGNAL ideas or stories? The only tv shows that I like are Homicide and Law and Order, X-Files and the oh so sappy Seinfeld. Most of the rest of the shows seeem to have been written by morons. The shows seem to revolve around the lowest common denominator when it comes to humor or story line, I guess they the writers feel that the general public is too stupid to deal with complex issues or clever humor.

The last time my intelligence was insulted? Hmm When I went to see Contact with Jodie foster. I expected so much more and all I got was crap...I only went to see it because in my mind, if Jodie is in a film it probally will be pretty good, oh well. Same goes for the last Aliens also.

Hmm the last good movie I saw? Well I liked the Devils Advocate alot, even though it too was to easy to figure out but less so than many others.

Trying to come up to the endings of shows almost immediately into them is a good exercise--I recommend it highly as an exercise. When the ending is better than you guessed, allow yourself to feel some appreciation. When the ending is worse than you predicted, congratulate yourself for having a finely tuned storymeter and continue to hone it. If you aren't interested in guessing the ending at all, watch something else.

I like Charles's criticism about the lack of orignal stories. It's really hard to come up with an original story. The best example of this was demonstrated in my Sitcom class, when we had to come up with premises for Everybody Loves Raymond and half the class came up with the exact same one.

Because it's so hard to come up with an original story, it's imperative for writers to dig deeper and at the very least come up with a personal twist on an old tale. Why does this story have resonance for you? What new thing can you say with a familiar story?

I didn't see Contact, so I can't comment--it didn't look that interesting to me, but Darin was eager to see it and went with Fernando.

We did see Alien Resurrection, which was a dopey movie. The people in charge of the Alien franchise haven't realized that the Alien-qua-scary creature has been played out--we've seen the Alien, okay? We've bought the action figure, we've been on the ride at the MGM Park. They have to come up with something original to say about the concept of Aliens and what they mean to one another.

Amanda says:

I like movies I can't guess the twists of. I truly hate being able to guess whodunnit in the first 15 minutes of the movie. I like intelligent writing. I also like silly movies, ones that are funny but not stupid. Stupid humour , like whatever Leslie Nielsen makes now, or Dumb and Dumber, can't bear it. I also go to see a movie that has effects that won't transfer to the small screen well. Independance Day was one of these, crap movie, fairly good actors, and things being blow up in a spectacular way. Or a movie with spectacle, great chunks of scenery.

Amanda's point about going to see the spectacle is well-taken--these movies don't transfer to the small screen well. (Whenever I see a heavy effects spectacle on TV I always think, "Did this movie look this cheesy in the theatre?")

Whenever somebody asked me, "Should I go see Titanic?" I always answered, "On the biggest screen you can find." Because that's half the movie. (Len saw Titanic on his TV, as a result of being sent the video by the Academy. He thought the first videotape was a complete waste of time. And it would be...on a TV.)

When it comes to patronizing crap, there's clearly a wide range of tastes out there. What's the difference between a "silly movie" that's funny but not stupid and a stupid movie? I thought Austin Powers was great fun but couldn't stand even 10 minutes of Ace Ventura on TV. I'm sure quite a few people feel exactly the opposite.

Beth adds her 2 cents with:

I like the same things in movies that I like in other forms of entertainment. I like good stories with tension and suspense and emotion and as little obvious preaching as possible. I like good dialogue that doesn't embarrass me, but I can overlook clunky words if the story is good enough. I don't particularly care if the characters behave like real people; real people generally irritate the hell out of me.

Humor that depends on humiliating the characters will cause me to walk out of the theater. I just can't stand it. Any movie that features either Robin Williams or Tom Hanks in tears automatically qualifies as "patronizing crap," no matter how good the movie is otherwise. Ditto any movie in which the token intellectual sports a British accent, or the token wisecracking friend is black, etc.

All of that aside, I don't necessarily need to be intellectually challenged by a movie in order to enjoy it. Richard III challenged me intellectually and bored the snot out of me at the same time. On the other hand, I loved Air Force One -- even though I can't even remember what it was about, and I'm pretty sure it was not the slightest bit intellectual.

Some examples of pure patronizing crap (I don't go to movies much anymore -- some of these are really old): Congo, the Lost World, Frankenstein, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. All of those had me squirming in my seat.

Now, Beth brings up a lot of interesting points:

• Characters in movies don't have to behave like real people. In fact, one of the reasons we go to movies is to meet people that we wouldn't normally meet in everyday life. Most of the people we know in real life are pretty damn boring. We want to meet people who have interesting occupations--perhaps they face death every day, like police officers or members of the bomb squad, or they are con artists, or astronauts, or...

  Of course, the movie has to make us understand these strange, larger-than-life people. Which is where a lot of them fail.

• Stereotypes are always annoying. They're a really good sign that no effort went into creating a character.

• Taste isn't always easy to quantify, and the intelligence of a piece is not a good gauge for how successful it is. There are plenty of dopey movies that I loved that cause people to look down their noses at me, and there are the crowd pleasers that leave me cold: Air Force One, for example. (And I did enjoy Richard III quite a bit.)

  The most recent "intelligent" movie, The Spanish Prisoner, had me reaching for my gun at how arch and self-satisfied it seemed. Yet there were plenty of people who think it's the bees' knees.

Career Notes

Dropped a copy of the Rewrite Script off for the Chick at ICM today. When it suddenly dawned on me that this is a Three Day Weekend (which means one extra day of getting through that pile of scripts), I had to get the script to her.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics