I recently read a book that purported to impart valuable tips on screenwriting by comparing the elements of good and bad scripts. Unfortunately, it didn’t take too long to realize that there was considerably less here than met the eye.
For one thing, the author has only a few modest screen credits, but more disturbing was the paint-by-numbers template he set up for himself. A script is “good” if the film was financially successful, and then a script is “bad” if the movie dies at the box office. It also helped that the good ones he chose have been unanimously labeled such by the elite critics.
Thus, with these definitions in hand, he can simply analyze the properties involved, and always head toward the predetermined conclusion. An unanticipated bonus—that would have been better left out—was a generous portion of Leftist precepts, intended to help us understand the deeper meaning of the screenplays being discussed.
Our plucky author was thus unfazed by either the views of mogul Sam Goldwyn: “If you want to send a message, call Western Union,” or Walt Disney: “We make the movies, and then the professors tell us what they are about.” On the other hand, he definitely gave full tribute to music industry legend Russ Regan’s quote, that may have been more sardonic than sincere: “There’s no such thing as a bad hit record.”
Beyond the sheer mental laziness involved in the work’s basic design is the rather obvious observation that a far more interesting book would have explored how a good script can be unsuccessful, and how a bad one can rake in the dollars. Indeed, there are at least as many examples of these phenomena (and probably lots more) than the type of cases he presented. As far as I can tell, notwithstanding the usual lamentations of art versus commerce or ruminations on the stupid and fickle public, no such book has ever been published.
At first blush, you might think that prospective screenwriters would appreciate a fresh point of view as they attempt to enter the most competitive—and lucrative—writing environment in the world. However, as long as coaching on the business of selling scripts and making a successful movie is conflated with the amazingly lockstep universe of film criticism, and those who seek entry inevitably strive to conform, the book market won’t support anything but the standard platitudes.
For those who would disagree with my portrayal of film criticism, I will acknowledge that the Internet has allowed more divergent viewpoints to be expressed, but this relatively new development has not had any measurable effect on these unassailable rules:
1. If a film’s perceived message is in keeping with some current PC or Leftist principle, it will be praised even if is lacking in any or all other areas.
2. Too much credit will be given to the director.
Let’s take the second one first. Much more than any other art form, motion pictures are gestalt: The whole is far greater than the sum of its parts. All the elements—story, sound, score, production design, photography, performances, direction, and editing—interact to form the viewer’s experience.
Since considerably more film is shot than is ever used in the final cut, and the arrangement of the images is ultimately what captures the viewer, it is clear that editing—if we must single out a preeminent function—is the most important. Naturally, the editor has to have something to start with, and the final cut is most often up to the producers or the studio, so even this designation is dicey at best.
The point is, there is more going on than the director.
The first rule can be proven with countless examples, but one that comes to mind, and also proves the second is the vastly overrated The Bicycle Thief (1948). Although this pic does illustrate some few cinematic skills, viewed through objective eyes, it is little more than a Marxist home movie.
The film’s hero, desperate to get a job in postwar Italy, finally succeeds in obtaining one in which he posts advertising around Rome. However, he needs a bicycle, and must pawn the linens off his bed (!) that magically give him enough money to purchase a bicycle. Alas, the bike is stolen on his first day on the job, and although he eventually tracks down the thief, the perp denies the crime, and has already fenced it. Dejected, our protagonist even tries stealing a bike himself, but is soon caught and released by the owner. He then returns home bereft of hope, and adrift in the cruel world that exists outside of a socialist paradise.
While there are several absurdities in the story, no one seems to have figured out that if ratty sheets can produce enough money to get a bike, surely other items in his apartment would suffice to get him a replacement bike and a lock. More than that, without the capitalist enterprises of a pawn shop and advertising posters, there would be no story at all.
Yet, Roger Ebert was puzzled as to how Bicycle’s director Vittorio De Sica could have come up with the laughably awful A Place for Lovers (1968). Gosh, I wonder…