Write what you know...

[Mr. Lucky]

Well, to comment on the original question I'd suggest that during the Golden Era, scripts tended to be written by people who came out of a fairly broad range of experience before they landed in Hollywood -- you had burned-out novelists, hard-boiled reporters, Broadway wiseguys, ex-vaudevillians who had travelled all over the world, in other words people who had *been around*. Nowadays, you have to go to college to learn to be a screenwriter -- and while you might learn a lot of film theory and technique, four years of sitting in a classroom doesn't exactly give one a broadly-based life experience from which to draw one's stories.

Although one *might* meet a few zombies there.

You are exactly right. My grand-father wrote TV for thirty+ years. He started in live TV having been a newspaperman for the prior 15, flew a plane in WWII, prospected for gold in the Yukon and had an abundance of adventures and experiences prior to his final career. Those that were his contemporaries (Chayefsky, Monash, etc.) all had careers prior to those in TV and movies. Today, for the most part, it's a bunch of kids straight out of school and looking for the big bucks and cheap chicks that Hollywood is supposed to provide. If I hear or meet one more Ivy league puke...well, there's a legitimacy to the business that there never was before. Money attracts it. For the longest time it was an outcast industry populated by Jews and newspapermen and (gasp!) actors. But when the money got big, well, you know what happened. And it's too bad.

And, as another person wrote, having been through the production mill - the execs, the studio, the director, the actor, the caterer - everyone has notes and everyone wants their notes attended to and, ultimately, the story, the characters, etc. become diluted down to the lowest common denominator. Again, tragic.

But in defense! There are really outstanding writers out there today telling remarkable stories. Deadwood. Battlestar Galactica. Goodnight and Good Luck. Capote. GREAT FREAKIN' story tellin'. And ALL sourced from life experience. You don't have to have the EXACT same situation - but you do have to have the EXACT same feeling in the situations that you create as you do in life. THAT is what experience can bring, and still does. It just seems, with SO MANY outlets, it's just harder to find.

 

[carebear]

Mr. Lucky,

Thanks for pointing out the good.

One of my favorite bits of TV recently was in Deadwood when Dan was going to fight Hearst's Captain. Swearingen keeps putting Dan off while he tries to figure out the angles, especially Hearst's motivation. Finally he admits "it's beyond me" in that inimitable Swearingen style and unleashes Dan on him.

That was a great bit of writing and acting. Swearingen is competent and usually ahead of the game but he finally ran up against something he couldn't figure and just threw it to chance. Everyone in the show has an agenda and they are all sharp but events beyond their control keep interfering, leaving them to make do as best they can.

Why is that so hard? Most writers would have us watching a village of idiots who, say, would regard smallpox with absolute ignorance, as if they'd never heard of it, rather than leaping right into saving the camp.

 

[Mr. Lucky]

Mr. Lucky,

Thanks for pointing out the good.

One of my favorite bits of TV recently was in Deadwood when Dan was going to fight Hearst's Captain. Swearingen keeps putting Dan off while he tries to figure out the angles, especially Hearst's motivation. Finally he admits "it's beyond me" in that inimitable Swearingen style and unleashes Dan on him.

That was a great bit of writing and acting. Swearingen is competent and usually ahead of the game but he finally ran up against something he couldn't figure and just threw it to chance. Everyone in the show has an agenda and they are all sharp but events beyond their control keep interfering, leaving them to make do as best they can.

Why is that so hard? Most writers would have us watching a village of idiots who, say, would regard smallpox with absolute ignorance, as if they'd never heard of it, rather than leaping right into saving the camp.

This last season of Deadwood (and unfortunately THE last season) was all about power - unknown, unbound and uncontrollable power and what that can do to men and their adversaries. Al was so over his head and it was only a combination of his wily nature and dumb luck that he, and the camp, survived.

But remember, it, to some extent, has always been like this. For every Deadwood there's fifty My Mother Car and Cop Rock's. For every early seasons of ER, there are the later, and weaker, seasons of ER. For every hit there are a multitude of clones and imposters that follow. This is not new. There's just more a wider arena in which to cast the pearls against swine. Back in the day there were THREE networks - that's it. Now EVERYONE is doing original programming - even AMC wants to be the next F/X or HBO. The same goes for movies. I think in the past few years the production of films has increased exponentially for the first time since TV took it's celluloid bite!

I took a class a few years ago taught by a network suit, a rarity - a smart one. And he talked about how we are moving away from BROADcasting to NARROWcasting and he was right. There are specialized channels for everything from wheat growing to dog grooming. And all those nets have to have something to put on the air. And that's where the divisions fall and the good storytellers are in short supply - you get both The Sopranos and Two and a Half Men. Just like the Twilight Zone, Johnny Staccato (with John Cassavettes) OR My Mother the Car and Mr. T and Tina. It's the nature of the beast.

 

[carebear]

That's TV, short shooting schedules and multiple episodes.

What are the movie writer's excuses?

Jurassic Park II

A team of trained mercenaries, obviously briefed on the fact that there are dinosaurs on the island, sit down in the forest without any security out nor choosing decent terrain. When *oh G-d how unexpected, a dinosaur on dinosaur island!* appears these trained, briefed military personnel don't take cover and return fire, no, they panic.

A supposedly professional hunter not only walks away from his weapon, he fails to check it on returning to it.

Stargate

A trained Air Force special forces team, knowing they are going to another dimension but unsure what's there, choose about the least powerful shoulder weapon available. They then again fail to use rudimentary tactics or security in that dimension, even going so far as to split up when attacked.

Blair Witch Project

Kids, conceivably one who might have read a book at some point, are trying to walk out of the woods in Jersey. They lose the map and in the process of walking out ford a steam multiple times. Why not just turn and follow the stream out? It may be a long hike, but in Jersey you will hit a road and you can't get any more lost. Plus they don't arm themselves once things get dicey and don't even think to pick up a rock or stick for defense prior to going into the house (though why go into the house at all? and why keep the dang camera up removing your ability to be aware of your surroundings?)

These are bush league errors which none of the characters in the first two examples, had they acted like what they were supposed to be, would have made. In the last, following a stream out is basic knowledge, arming yourself in a threatening situation is almost instinctual, going into a house is just dumb.