“Tone Movies”

Ah, Comic Con. That time of year where Hollywood takes over San Diego and tries to wow the geeks with footage of upcoming “blockbusters”.
One star of Comic Con the last couple of years has been Zack Snyder, director/writer of “300” and “Watchmen”. This year he is promoting his first original film, “Sucker Punch,” which will be released in 2011 and will have “100s of layers” to analyze.
Coincidentally, Christopher Nolan’s “Inception” has been critically and financially successful, burning up the box office. The film, a cohesive, tight script keeps spiraling towards what seems to be out of control, but remains emotionally centered.
While both Snyder and Nolan are both very successful making films, one is called a genius by the press (Nolan) and the other is called a genius by his promotional team (Snyder in promo for Watchmen). What is the difference between these two storytellers?
Well, only one of them is actually telling a story. While Nolan’s films may be calculated – the story clicks together like a well-manufactured trap. Snyder’s films aren’t about emotion or story, they are as I would argue, “tone films”.
“Tone films” are movies with style over substance where the look and feel of the film are given greater importance than a story and great characters. These films may be “awesome” but I don’t think they will ever be considered “great”. The great movies, I would argue doesn’t matter what they look like because story and character fully involve you into the film. Just because something looks cool, it doesn’t necessarily move the story forward. There’s a reason they’re called movies – the story should continually move forward and move the audience to some kind of emotional response. While the fight scenes in 300 are cool in slow motion, they don’t essentially move the story forward and challenge the characters, making the movie like a shiny tin man without a heart inside of him.
To the screenwriter, story and character should be the focus of the script. It’s no wonder that Pixar is continually successful, they hammer story like no other studio. It’s like “Field of Dreams” – if you build it (a successful story) they will come- even the geeks.

Reasons Why There are “Bad Movies”

Bad movies – they come out almost every weekend. Some make money, some don’t. In an industry known for high budgets, why do these films exist and why can’t they be prevented?

I have a few ideas.

1. Interns reading scripts – The most inexperienced people in the industry are the gatekeepers. Interns probably do about 50%+ of the reading of scripts in the entertainment business, with about another 40% done by assistants. Unfortunately, most of the people in these jobs have very little expertise in discerning a good script from a bad one. The people who can really tell the difference aren’t usually the people reading the scripts anyway.

2. SUITS – The people in charge are generally not “creatives”. They are someone’s nephew, accountants, or business-types. When you get these type of people involved in the creative process, their ideas might not be the best for the movie. As an illustration, it is no coincidence that Pixar has had 11 straight hit movies, both financially and critically. It is a studio run by the writers and the directors – people who understand story.

3. Release Dates – One reason so many “tentpole flicks” aren’t usually very good is because they have a deadline. Many times big franchise films will have a release date before there is even a pitch, let alone a script. This results in a rushed development phase and the script isn’t usually in very good shape for production.

4. YOU – the viewer – As long as franchise films with weak storytelling and script make more money, this is what the studios will make. It is the route of least resistance. However, this summer seems to be a wake up call to Hollywood. Big budget star-studded flops aren’t making the money they used to.

Are original films on the rise? Can story become king in Hollywood again? The signs are extremely positive in my opinion. If you love good storytelling in film and want more original filmmaking, vote with your wallet. Support films that fall into this category.

Nobody Knows Anything

William Goldman: Screenwriting Legend

Those are the immortal words of the great screenwriter, William Goldman.

Today, those words ring even truer in the film industry. There is no sure bet (maybe outside of the Harry Potter and Twilight franchises), and no stream of income is guaranteed (goodbye DVD sales…).  Face it, the entertainment industry is at an impasse.  All the old ways of making money seem to be going away (it’s getting harder and harder to get people to watch your film or television show, with the multitude of options out there), and it doesn’t seem like there is any new forms of income around the corner.  On demand viewing is the hot buzz area right now, but no one seems to quite know how to make it work yet (that’s another column, another time).

So where does the future lie for the film studios? I don’t quite have the question, but I think the answer lies somewhere in the type of content that Hollywood produces. There is no other industry in America that will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on a product with the hope of breaking even or making merely millions of dollars. Whereas the film industry could once count on DVD to make up for losses at the box office, that stream of revenue seems to be going drastically down, and with many films being released in and for 3D, it’s harder to get people to buy them on DVD. The experience just can’t be replicated.

And I think this scares people. All the hatred that Avatar amassed during production and the lead-up to its release, seems to stem out of two things – jealousy over James Cameron’s creative pull, and the fact that the movie could bring up production costs on competing features if it were a hit. Guess what, it is a hit. 230 million worldwide in one weekend? Those are numbers that assure it will be profitable in the long run. Sony doesn’t care if it makes money tomorrow, or this week, or even this year. They assured themselves with Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakel, which, laugh all you want, it will do great money.

So how do writers fit into all of this? Do we go for that elusive “four quadrant” film and the big bucks like Cameron did (though the film doesn’t reek of something very marketable) or do we go for the niche audiences that provide good word of mouth? I think you can do both, by not paying attention to either. Writers should be true to themselves and what they want to write, and if a screenplay provides an element of truth and entertainment value (and then during production, they don’t manage to mess things up), it will find an audience.  Finding a voice is hard, and even harder is rising above the noise and letting people know you exist.  A good writer will manage to make a script theirs, yet also belong to its readers and their experiences.

Nobody knows anything might not be so truthful after all. Write what you know, and then the rest may come to you.