Interesting interview with screenwriting guru Robert McKee on Storylink. Here's one tidbit on why television may be experiencing a golden age in the U.S.:
There's a tendency today in all media to substitute spectacle for substance. But storytelling has gone through bad periods like this in the past. As was true 100 years ago in both the novel and the theatre, we're going through another period again where the storytelling is atrophying underneath the effort of too many writers being drawn to the surface and not the substance of their work, and they produce works that are dazzling on the surface but often hollow. For this reason, I think the best storytelling in the world today tends to be on television, because the television screen does not lend itself to spectacle. It's small, and so the most expressive shot tends to be the close-up, and when you move the camera in those heads start to talk. In the best of television today, and especially in America where we're experiencing a golden age of television, the dramas that are created are long, and rich, and deep and very complex and fascinating. I think one of the reasons television is growing in its influence everywhere in the world is because in television there is no point in trying to be spectacular, and writers are forced to go back into the substance of human conflict in relationships and within human beings, and, as a result, they are producing, overall, the finest work. So it's not lost, it's just changed its address and moved over to television.
To read the whole interview, click here.
