The following quote from a recent comment on this blog caught my attention for an undercurrent of anger that I think it belies and what I think may be a fundamental misunderstanding of creative people and their efforts that might be worth examining.
Actress, director, teacher, activist and E.C. Author Mari Gorman posed the following question in response to David Licata's post on Manohla Dargis' interview on women filmmakers. [see: Manohla Dargis Tells It!]. In a comment on David’s post, the name Nancy Meyers had come up as an example of a female movie director whose films often display the sensitivity and psychological insight of an 11-year-old boy. Here’s the part of Mari’s comment that caught my eye:
What I don't understand, honestly, is how people with so much power--and artists supposedly--could in good conscience indulge in such crap. Maybe they think they have all the time in the world to make a difference later.
It’s an interesting idea. To imagine artists working in a commercial system telling themselves that they are simply marking time, paying down the mortgage until that time in the future when they’ll finally be free to pursue what really moves them. That may describe some filmmakers I know, but I would doubt it describes most.
Instead, I would expect that if a certain Hollywood film (to take one easy example) is overtly formulaic to the extent that characters are rendered chess pieces being shuffled around the world of the film by an overreaching plot, chances are it did not get that way because the director, writers or even studio executives set out to create a hack job.No one ever sets out to produce garbage. And yet, garbage reappears year after year in the guise of "family entertainment," "romantic comedy," "action/adventure," "thriller,"--the list is endless because failure is an equal opportunity offender. It can show up under any genre heading, no matter how highbrow an auteur's intentions. Put another way, commercial Hollywood doesn’t have a monopoly on hack writing. So-called “artistes” at all levels and in all forms of creative expression seem to be equally susceptible to the siren call of cliché and awkwardly hatched plot.
The problem with 90% of Hollywood fluff is not the fluff. Hell, no! Fluff can be wildly entertaining, when executed properly. The problem with most fluff is that those in the creative driver's seat (screenwriters and directors, for the most part) are so focused on the big picture, they neglect the details. And as we all know (thanks to Mies van der Rohe) God is in the details.In the case of most storytelling at the multiplex, the most common area of neglect is: authentic characterization. We human beings share so much psychologically. It’s what makes theatre of any kind possible. It’s in our DNA; we have a shared experience of being in the world and when aspects of our existence are reflected authentically, we feel it in our bones. When people are made to behave on screen in ways that defy our innate understanding of the human experience, we turn off. We turn off not only to the characters onscreen but to the story being told.
Schlock has been around since the dawn of time. For every Much Ado About Nothing or The Magic Flute, (both of which were composed as trifles) there were countless lesser examples of an evening’s entertainment that got a few laughs but did not endure. Why? If it just doesn’t ring true with what we know of real life experience, we won’t make room for it in our memory banks or in our hearts.Commercial movie makers would do a lot better if they learned to be still and listen. Listen to their characters and follow them wherever they might go. The results can be surprisingly entertaining.
