Screenwriting

Drop by a bookstore and you can find numerous books about screenwriting, far more books you might think than there are active screenwriters.  And maybe that’s ok – one reason books exist is to let us immerse in activities we would never actually do or perhaps dabble with doing or maybe actually can’t do.

So then why do so many colleges offer classes in screenwriting?  The best that one of these students can hope for is that they might be able someday to write a commercial or instructional video for an employer.  In fact even then they would be better off learning as they go like most screenwriters have done.  Whether this makes screenwriting classes the equivalent of the mythical basketweaving classes is hard to call – you might argue that students learn discipline and control of language – but that’s not a comparison that could be easily dismissed.

The even bigger picture is that despite all this instruction and support there can only be a very few people who would claim that Hollywood writing is in any conceivable fashion being well-done.  We all realize that screenwriting is far worse than it was even thirty years ago, across the board no matter whether you’re considering structure, dialogue, concision or pacing.  And I’m including TV as “Hollywood” because even if you consider The Sopranos, Deadwood, Lost or even The Walking Dead, True Blood or The Wire as somehow superior to other TV they are all severely damaged by the demands of a medium that requires padding, extension and subplots.  (The Brits, at least here, do this better.)

But it was actually three films and a specific item that started me wondering about this.  Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon, The Green Hornet and Conan the Barbarian all have a prologue and in each case the prologue is utterly unnecessary.  The material is what once upon a time would have be considered backstory and brought up in the main story as needed.  Now we’re treated to plodding displays of every single motive and character beat.  The idea of backstory still exists apparently but now is something to fill out running times or to eliminate any confusion or ambiguity.

Admittedly these three films are all quite bad but as far as screenwriting goes they aren’t Hollywood anomalies.  Enormous hits like Avatar or Iron Man are if anything worse.  Even acclaimed films such as recent Oscar nominees Moneyball, Inception, Midnight in Paris, Argo and (seriously?) Avatar don’t show much to contradict this, though admittedly even if most Oscar nominees typically aren’t particularly good films they also typically aren’t especially bad ones either.

This all comes back not necessarily to screenwriting classes and books but to the idea inherent in them that screenwriting is basically learning certain structures and techniques.  I’ve read the Robert McKee book and that perhaps sums it up.  McKee’s book either displays the obvious or jumps into the silly but basically it’s an extended attempt to turn learning exercises into master technique, or even dogma.  However useful the idea of three-act structure might be on a theoretical level it does have a purpose in guiding somebody learning to write.  It’s not necessary to learn that way and in fact that may not be best way to do it but it does have a function.

What’s happening though is that this is turning into the way all screenplays are being conceived and structured.  That’s why we’re seeing prologues and exposition and character moments and movies that are far too long.  There’s just too much clutter.  This is unavoidable for TV shows because they have to run for certain amounts of time and use a certain number of actors (at least American TV).  Not to mention that networks can’t leave well  enough alone and insist on continuing shows past their sell-by dates.

And there’s too much effort on making the three-act story fit three acts.  It’s increasingly rare to see in media res used though many films could benefit from it.  One of my all-time favorite TV episodes is from Firefly that opens with the captain alone on the ship, so wounded that he’s barely able to crawl and the ship counting down to self-destruction.  How many films would open like that?  (Actually one of the deleted scenes for The Avengers was a Maria Hill debriefing that would have made most of the film a flashback.  It was wisely removed not just for the flashback issue but because the tone was off.)  What made the Firefly episode more memorable, if a bit showy, is that along with the story of the captain’s struggle against the clock it had flashbacks to show how he and the crew got to that point and then a second set of flashbacks relating how the crew came to be on the ship together.

You could argue that the sorry state of screenwriting is really due to those perennial bad guys The Money Men.  They’re the ones insisting that stories be completely clear, that there be no gaps or ambiguities, that characters be likable and reasonable (or if they’re antagonists then mean and reasonable), that every little thing be explained and filled in.  So writers are just giving the studios what they want which is what the studios think the public wants (or at least tests well).

Which perhaps answers my initial question.  There are books and classes about screenwriting because that’s how the assembly line keeps running.  And I’m hardly the first person to point out that it’s the glamour of movies that brings people to that business against their better judgement so if they see a way to create a ticket to that ride then what could be better?  Even if they really know it’s never going to happen they can still convince themselves that hey just maybe it could if only I had the time, connections, ideas, luck, right software.  Because after all writing a screenplay is just like making a sausage….

Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino 2012)

In an odd way Django Unchained reminds me of Cars.  That film was Pixar’s first failure and, consequently or causally, looked like a Pixar imitation while Django Unchained is Tarantino’s first complete failure and looks much like a Tarantino imitation.  Except that few imitators would have let their film stretch so far that a good hour or so should have been removed.

Consider the opening where Dr. Schultz inexplicably arrives from the exact opposite direction of the slave train so how did he know about the sale of a particular slave?  Or why he rides with Django all the way to the next town before either of them discuss what he wants?  Yes, this is nitpicking - both points could easily be explained and don’t much matter anyway.  But why set up a plot based on tracking down three brothers only to resolve it immediately, apparently at the first plantation the duo visits?  Only to then bring out the longer plot point of Django searching for his wife?  What’s the purpose of the entire winter sequence?  I suspect it was just a way to pay tribute to The Great Silence but supposed that it could be considered Django’s training.  It’s not at all clear if there’s any good reason to delay Django’s search through the winter.

The film basically meanders along, oddly slack and with little of the brisk dialogue that Tarantino favors.  Apparently the point is to show Django’s growth from his start with a (re)birth, to where he is taught to dress and read, sits down for a bedtime story then learns from the doctor until at last he’s a murdering, bombing, wife-saving Man.  The whole thing is so simplistic and even cartoonish (one sequence could have come from Blazing Saddles) that the film has nothing to say about slavery (which Tarantino perhaps learned about from viewing Goodbye Uncle Tom) or race or anything really.  Maybe it wasn’t meant to say anything but it’s not even entertaining except for bits here and there so that doesn’t leave us much of anywhere.

I’m still not sure whether Tarantino meant for us to notice, if in fact he noticed himself, the ethical problem of Dr. Schultz.  As a bounty hunter who can bring in a bounty dead or alive he chooses dead, something he explains in such a deadpan tone that it sounds more psychopathic than reasonable.  More to the point is this means that the legal system, if not justice in the broader sense, is being bypassed - there can never be a trial.  The suspect is prejudicially determined guilty.  Considering the vague descriptions and lack of photographs there’s certainly a good chance for misidentification, though admittedly this point starts to wander away from the film.  DU isn’t about the mechanics of bounty hunting though the blatant disregard of ethics is certainly to the point.

As an aside, this is a movie version of bounty hunting.  Such hunters weren’t officially part of the law enforcement system until well after the Civil War and most of them during the period in the film tracked slaves and deserters primarily.  And they only got half the bounty if the suspect was dead.  All this seems to have varied widely but it does point to some historical uncertainties in DU.  At the very start we’re told that the film is set in 1858 “two years before the Civil War” which of course is wrong.  I tried to see if Tarantino explained this but all I found were some people claiming that this is him deliberately adding historical inconsistencies though I didn’t really understand to what purpose.  In Walker Alex Cox added blatant anachronisms with the purpose of drawing a continuity between 19th and 20th century meddling in Central America.  That film wasn’t entirely successful in such a purpose (and of course ignored that Walker’s expeditions had no government backing unlike most of what the US did the following century) and Django Unchained has no similar point to make.  Besides being off about the start of the war by a single year looks far more like a plain old mistake rather than some deliberate effect.  I also noticed that instead of Brunhilde (or variant spellings) the character’s name is spelled Broomhilda just like the comic strip.

It’s nice to see Franco Nero, the original Django, in a cameo though it would have been even better to have also included Tomas Milian who had the lead in the demented Django Kill...If You Live Shoot (whether or not he’s actually called Django in that film).  The geek part of me thinks it would have been cool to have peppered the entire film with actors who played Django in the many films using that name, though most were simple retitles for the English-language market.

German Book 3

J.W. Thomas (ed) - German Verse from the 12th to the 20th Century in English Translation (1963)

Well, this is very annoying.  I wrote the review for this and apparently at some point deleted it without posting.  I don't feel like rewriting it (and in any case have returned the book to the library) so a few points:

*  The translations are all by the editor J.W. Thomas and though he doesn't explicitly say so he appears to be trying to duplicate the original meter and rhyme scheme in English.  This starts out well (perhaps the song-like nature of the medieval verses are more musical than poetic?) but increasingly seems to hobble the translations.

*  As far as I can tell from comparing to other anthologies this is a fairly standard representation of poets.  There are a few that don't appear in others (such as the Penguin anthology) but I have no idea if those are idiosyncratic choices or just the second-tier writers that will always change with the person making the selection.

*  The modern pieces are missing such big names as Brecht and Benn.  There's no indication whether this is due to copyright, whether Thomas feels they're not important or if they're after some unstated cut-off date.

*  There are some glosses as headers to the poems that mostly are unneeded.  The bios for each poet are useful as far as they go but Thomas is determined to link most poems to the actual life.  A strong and not uncommon impulse but does it really matter whether a particular work was intended for the woman who would become the poet's wife?  Thomas' introductions to each era are broad and simplistic.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (David Gelb 2011)

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is highly regarded so completely out of proportion to its actual very limited accomplishments that it's tempting to review the reviewers.  But let's put that off until later.  The film itself, in case you don't know, is about the elderly but still working sushi chef of what is regarded as one of the top sushi restaurants in the world.  Of course that's a substantial topic but the film only sometimes touches on that.  Instead it's a puff piece, filled with raves and shot in glossy ad style.  There are shots of sushi (complete with identifying labels) that are aesthetically identical to any McDonalds or Hardees commercial.  Come to Jiro's Place!  We'll have a grand time!

A bigger problem is that director Gelb doesn't seem to have started with any solid idea about what to do.  There's behind-the-scenes sequences, historical recaps of Jiro's life, on-the-streets atmosphere shots, a more verite-styled bit where Jiro visits his home town and so forth.  It doesn't blend well and none of it is followed through.  It's almost like Gelb kept thinking "Oh let's put this in as well".  Never mentioned (unless I completely missed it) is such important information as how much a meal costs (about US$380 according to other sources), that these often last about 20 or so minutes, or other details.  Instead we're treated to stories of how hard Jiro still works and how demanding he can be.  One assistant made egg sushi 200 times before Jiro deemed it acceptable.  Even assuming the story is true and not some off-hand number it falls very clearly, as do the similar stories, into a familiar Orientalism of hard, repetitious training under a master.  None of this, of course, has any bearing on whether the sushi is in fact "good" - countless cooks and artists work very hard for many years and still produce mediocre work.

It's also unclear who Gelb thought might be the viewer.  At first he seemed to assume basic information about sushi so that I thought the film was more for connoisseurs, even if they're wannabes.  But as it became clear that the film is really just a promotional piece for something almost none of us will experience it also became clear that Gelb wasn't very interested in much that would make this a documentary.  What's the point of one of those TV-ad shots of sushi labelled "O-toro"?  There's no explanation, it just looks nice.  Why show only bits of the sushi process?  Why treat Jiro's claim that the rice should be body temperature as any kind of insight?  There's a sequence towards the end where Jiro explains that for women he makes the sushi a bit smaller or that for left-handed customers he puts it on the other side.  I guess we're supposed to think this is an insight into his world-class wisdom but the thing is that this is exactly what any decent sushi chef does, just as they often pack the rice differently for somebody eating with fingers rather than chopsticks.  It's like watching a documentary on Thomas Keller where he explains that when cooking a steak he will season it.  Yep, just that pointless.  There's also a bit where an on-camera critic compares Jiro's meals to music and then we're treated to a sequence where he explains this while we hear a classical piece and watch parts of the meal.  Only problem is that it's complete nonsense.  There's nothing resembling musical structure about the meal's progression and since Gelb's father was manager of the Met surely he knows this.

Oh, but let's get to the reviewers.  On Rotten Tomatoes Jiro Dreams of Sushi rates a remarkable 99% which should be a red flag that they're not really watching the film.  Just taking comments from the site (in other words there's a possibility some are out of context but I'll just live with that) how about starting with Stanely Kauffmann who claims Gelb "wouldn't need filmic embellishments to keep his viewers alert".  Guess he slept through the slow and fast motion parts, ignored the glossy shots, skipped the posed portraits of the restaurant staff staring at the camera.  Rich Cline says Gelb takes "a minimalist approach that matches his subject matter" so he also apparently missed the variety of styles and extravagant shots.  This isn't a Wiseman film after all.  Perry Seibert states it's "a movie worthy of Jiro himself" which doesn't quite make sense but then many of the reviews seem to be aiming for such hazy praise.

German Book 2

WG Sebald is another of the seemingly countless writers I've always intended to read but with a good chance that I never actually would.  His books have been described as using an idiosyncratic almost-collage approach complete with cryptic photographs that may or may not have anything to do with the text.  Then again his work is also described something to do with memory (the almost laughable blurb on the cover calls him "memory’s Einstein") and that sounds quite unappealing.

As it happens Vertigo (1990, English 1999) fits both descriptions though fortunately not in such a bland way as that might sound.  It’s so effective that I’ll likely read all his other books as long as they’re somewhat similar to this one.

Might as well look at the not-quite-collage technique.  The book opens with a biographical (or is it fictional?) account of a soldier during Napoleon’s march through the Alps who then embarks on a series of romantic adventures.  Turns out his name is Beyle and nowhere (at least that I remember) does Sebald remind readers that this was Stendhal's real name.  As far as I know this story is true - at least it sounds like the little I remember from Stendhal's life. 

It turns out that this section is related by the novel’s narrator who then tells us about his uneventful visit to Vienna and his unmotivated travels afterwards.  Throughout the book we get a distanced account from the narrator (little direct dialogue, not much in the usual detailed description of actions) and then more disconnected hstorical or literary pieces (there’s a “Dr. K” for instance).  Most collages rely on the disjunction created by the elements rubbing against each other but Sebald works more towards an integrated flow - actually "collage" may not be the right term.

The narrator is eventually heading to his hometown but it’s unclear exactly why.  None of his memories build to a great revelation (unless of course I completely misunderstood some subtle aspect of the book) and he doesn’t meet many people from his past.  It’s not a dramatic homecoming. 

I didn’t get a sense of vertigo from the book but Sebald does create a hazy, unsettled mood, almost as if this is a very long prose poem.  The bits from other people’s pasts and the famous photographs work into or against the main narrative don’t fit together like the near mathematical formulas many how-to-write-a-plot (or worse screenwriting) instructors would tell you.  Vertigo is actually a book I wanted to read again after finishing it and that’s pretty uncommon.

Assorted viewing

Big Fan (Robert D. Siegel 2009) - This is one of a few recent comedies that appear to have been made as comedies only because there was production money doing that as opposed to the more sober films they actually are - think of Observe and Report, Due Date or even Bridesmaids.  Still, Big Fan is probably the least comic, in fact about the only thing that would have even caused it to be labelled a comedy is the presence of Patton Oswalt.  Instead it's a stark, even blunt look at fan thinking and disillusionment though more complex than merely a fall from celebrity grace.  Oswalt effectively negotiates a tricky role while director Siegel favors an almost distanced style that avoids melodrama.  Like the films mentioned earlier something of a minor classic and deserves much more attention than it received.

The Adventures of Gerard (Jerzy Skolimowski 1970) - I had no idea that anybody made a film of Conan Doyle's Gerard stories and Skolimowski seemed like a nice choice.  The result, though, is something of a wreck with a confusing story, strained comedy and an overall feel of a home movie.  I have a feeling that there were production troubles or possibly just another attempt at quick multi-national money and nobody was too invested in the film.  For curious Conan Doyle fans only.

Rare Exports: From the Land of the Original Santa Claus (Jalmari Helander 2010) - The IMDB lists a different subtitle but mine is what's actually on the print.  This Finnish effort has an unusual idea about the origin of Santa Claus but takes quite a while to get around to using it.  It's not padded exactly but does meander more than necessary.  Perhaps it's needless to point out that the original short included on the DVD is much more effective.  Perhaps worth a look if you're looking for a darker Christmas story (that really doesn't have much to do with Christmas) but I wouldn't suggest making much of an effort.

Cop Hater (William Berke 1958) - An adaptation of the first of Ed McBain's 87th Precinct novels made shortly after the book's appearance.  It's actually fairly close to the original though it almost inevitably feels a bit tidied up.  Some of the less pleasant human motivations are toned down and the procedural aspects reduced to brief bits - probably more in the interests of telling a quick story than in any deliberate lightening of the book.  Mostly b-movie bluntness and certainly no lost gem though at least not boring.

Hot Cars (Don McDougall 1956) - I have a feeling that this was either intended for TV or was a low-budget shot at easy money (sort of how Hitchcock shot Psycho with a TV crew).  In any case it appears to be the only theatrical release for prolific TV director McDougall and the entire thing feels like TV.  It has the same even lighting, sets that look like they would push over and actors who run through dialogue with little inflection or variation.  The story about a man who gets pulled into a car theft ring is handled with few distractions.  It does have some nice location shooting, a somewhat imaginative finale in an amusement park and the presence of Joi Lansing (who has little talent but a cult following due to a couple of wild Scopiotones).

Library book sale

The last thing I need is more books but it's hard to resist the library book sales when they appear.  You never know what will show up and it's all a buck or two.  There were a few things I skipped.  Didn't know Pirandello wrote a novel about the film business (Shoot) but the copy was poor condition.  There was a Freya Stark book also with the cover coming off.  And a nice collection of "great essays" (mainly 18th and 19th century) but it was one of those tiny 60s paperbacks that the type was too small to be easily read.

But I did pick up:

Kogan - Shutterbabe
Ellis - His Excellency George Washington
Tannahill - Food in History
Swafford - Charles Ives
Moaveni - Lipstick Jihad
Elliott - An Unexpected Light: Travels in Afghanistan
Zhukov - Marshall Zhukov's Greatest Battles
Henderson - Pushcart Prize 2008
Halpern - Our Private Lives
Auster - The New York Trilogy
Cooper - The German Army 1933-1945