All of us are in the gutter

Tis the season when the Wave-inatrix catches up on all things movie. I look forward to it every year. I decamp to my narco-couch and local theaters and take in every movie I have been hankering to see all year. I find that one cannot be disgruntled and elated properly while watching the Golden Globes or Academy Awards if one has not viewed the fare in question.

Today I saw THE SAVAGES, with Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney. One word: WOW. It was sad and funny and meandering and complex. Just like life. But what a satisfying movie. And of course (as most things do) it led the Wave-inatrix to think about the way this nasty old industry works. THE SAVAGES (and its precursor, THE SLUMS OF BEVERLY HILLS) is the kind of movie that most deeply satisfies my movie-going urges. Yes, I take in the big action pictures and yes I do enjoy them - but they don't stick in my brain and they don't inspire me as a writer.



Most often, when I write about the art and craft of screenwriting in the Rouge Wave, I am referring to the rules and expectations that most mainstream production companies and agents would have of your average spec script. Scripts like JUNO, LARS AND THE REAL GIRL and THE SAVAGES - three of my favorite movies of 2007 - would not pass the litmus test that is applied to spec scripts floating around on the market. And yet they were all fantastic, complicated, entertaining movies which collectively have made less at the box office than NATIONAL TREASURE made in its opening weekend.

So what is an aspiring writer to do? Write based upon the template of selling scripts, or write from the heart and hope for the best? It's a cliche but still good advice to say just write a good story. Write the kind of movie you'd love to see; write from the heart and damn the torpedoes. And if you never find "success", i.e., a sale, you can still know that you wrote for the only reason to do so - because you had something to say.

In the same breath, it is important for aspiring writers to have a sense of what goes on in the corridors of production companies in Hollywood, where the deals are made. Mostly, what transpires is a bit heartbreaking and depressing - but what do we become as writers if we don't reach for the stars and write outside of the box? We have to be able to straddle reality and our aspirations as writers. What if Van Gogh had only painted what was popular at the time? What if Hemmingway wrote what he thought would sell? Make no mistake, writers need to eat and of course, every successful writer has taken paying the bills into consideration. It's pie-in-the-sky to think otherwise. But we can't be unbalanced in the way that we approach our writing; it's bread and circus and paying the bills, it's zeitgeist and heartfelt and everything in-between.

Yes, there a lot of terrible movies made and yes, scripts like JUNO outstrip the quality of writing in many box office giants. Know thine enemy and keep your eyes on the prize. The ability to write is a gift. Use it to support yourself, use it to express yourself and never forget the writers who came before you who took risks, money be damned.

All of us are in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars...
Oscar Wilde

If you enjoyed this post, follow me on Twitter or subscribe via RSS.