Eventually this young woman turned the conversation to her first movie and what she said I found both unremarkable (for I've heard variations of it before) and depressing. Essentially, she said that she was trying to do research on a specific demographic of women that were her target audience in the hopes of crafting a screenplay that would be instantly popular. How scientific! (How sickening)
I gave her my usual line: "You should write about what moves you, not about what you think may move others. Audiences are fickle and you can't possibly predict where tastes will be a year from now, so why bother?" What I wanted to say (but did not) was: A real writer writes what he or she is compelled to write. A real writer has ideas of her own.
I left the lunch somewhat depressed. I wondered to myself: Why are there so many young people interested in becoming filmmakers who don't seem to actually have anything they want to say? And that, naturally got me thinking about product placement and the way 90% of what's seen on television and in movie theatres today has products actually woven into the story lines.
I think I've blogged about this in the past, ranting about its ills, how awful it is to be watching something and not know you're simultaneously being sold something at the same time. And I still believe all that's true. But recently it dawned on me that William Shakespeare and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart were both dependent on the patronage of royalty and many of their greatest works were directly commissioned as vanity projects. Still, somehow they managed to create great art within those confines.
So could it be that right this very moment, toiling away in the halls of Saatchi & Saatchi is our next Mozart? I wonder...
