The Real Reason Style Over Substance is King Now

Many online critics have noted how movies today seem to care a lot more about being flashy than about being substantial.  It's not that there aren't good movies anymore; there are several great ones that couldn't even be made in decades past.

However, there is a noticeable drop in how many movies that are released in theaters have much substance to them.  Most of them, even many of the good ones, place an emphasis on the style way above the substance.  And people have been asking why.

I've personally seen the progress of this, and why it happened; though I didn't recognize what was happening because I thought it was just my own bitterness at failing to become a filmmaker myself.  In retrospect, however, I realize that the change was taking place right before my eyes.

It all comes from the film festivals.  You see, in order to get a film made, you can't go directly to any studio or production company.  They will all tell you that they take no unsolicited materials, which means you have to go through a major agency.  You go to the agencies and they all say the same thing, that you have to go through a manager.  Most managers will say the same thing, and the buck stops there.  It's a catch 22; an incestuous relationship among Hollywood insiders of which no one can break in.

The only way to slip through is in a film festival.  If you can get a film accepted into one of those, the agencies will go to them and will contact you to represent you.  You can then submit your projects to the studios through your agent, and those are the films that get made.  Even the "independent" companies that claim to be outside the Hollywood system work this way.  (It's called hypocrisy.)

So the real gatekeepers are those deciding what films show at the film festivals.  These festivals were originally created to build up creative talent and independent voices outside the studio system.  Many of the early films were rough around the edges but had a spirit to them that sparked viewers' interests.  As a great example of this, check out Peter Jackson's first film that got accepted to the Cannes Film Festival.

Films like this would never get accepted into festivals today because they're not sleek enough, or because they don't have a famous name in them; and thus, one of the greatest directors of all time would be overlooked.  How many other Peter Jacksons are being overlooked today because of this reason?  We'll never know.

Instead, most of the films that get accepted have high production value, and little attention is paid to story or character.  Sometimes films have style and some of the other elements, but only style makes a difference in whether or not a movie gets accepted.  Thus you wind up with filmmakers that are all about flash going to these festivals and getting through the gates to be able to pitch to studios.

The only way to break this cycle is for production companies and studios, or at least agents, to open up their ears to other voices that didn't have to go through such a narrow-minded corridor.  It's the reason why Youtube has such fresh voices that we're not seeing in the movie theater, and why staying home and watching something for free is often more appealing to people than paying money to go see movies that are full of style and lacking on substance.

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How Weird Al Yankovic was a Huge Influence on Me

Earlier this year, Jamie and I hurried down to Hollywood to see Weird Al get his star on the Walk of Fame. I'd never done that before, and there are few for whom I'd take that sort of time. 

The reason for this was evident when we accidentally went the week before and saw Jennifer Garner get her star right next to where his would be. (I had gotten the date wrong.) As we drove away, the person speaking at the event said, "Jennifer Garner is better than all of us." No joke, those were the woman's exact words.

What I have always loved about Weird Al is that he's outside all that Hollywood bullshit. Beyond being just a satirist, he's always provided an alternative to what we're told is supposed to be important, while not playing into the childish "conform to nonconformity" either. He's shown that it's okay to be different, to be smart, to be "weird." While much of that may seem obvious, it wasn't obvious to many as I was growing up.

In the '80s,just knowing how to run a computer got you labeled as a nerd and unworthy of popularity. God forbid you should be creative and interested in intellectual pursuits. Even being into Weird Al's music was considered lowbrow. It's a much different, and much better world today; one where differences are more celebrated and intelligence is a bit more appreciated.

But Al got me through a lot of lonely times, despite being seemingly nothing more than a comedian copying other people's music. It was simply the image of "being weird and oddball and different is okay" that was so important to me. So for that I can't think of anyone better to have gotten this star. I'll be sure to step all over it in the coming years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAYgZ_zzyTE

#weirdal #walkoffame #music #comedy #thomaslenon

The Process of Translating my Own Book into a Screenplay

I have held for years that my nonfiction book The Great Heist would make a great movie.  I originally tried to do so when I first learned of the story, but unfortunately I couldn't get it made.  Thus the reason it became a book.

I became re-inspired to try when someone came to me and optioned it for a year for the purpose of making a movie or limited series.  When he couldn't get it made, I decided to give it another try.  So I wrote my own version of a limited series pilot along with a series Bible.  There were some interesting things to note about the translation from written work to screenplay.

First, I had to let go of the inner historian; at least a large part of him.  It's not that I was willing to give up all historical accuracy, but I had to put the emotion of the story first.  In fact,t hat leads to the second, and most important task in translating a book to a screenplay.

The emotion of what happened and why it's relevant to the audience has to come first.  It's important to note that this does not run counter to historical accuracy.  In fact, it should run in tandem with it.  A common misconception is that entertainment value and historical accuracy are at odds with one another.  Some will say you need to drop historical accuracy for entertainment, others say you have to sacrifice entertainment in favor of accuracy, while others will say you need to balance the two.

All three of those are the wrong point of view to take.  If a filmmaker likes a true story well enough that they want to make it into a film, there must be something that drew them to the story in the first place.  Why make a movie about something for which there is no attraction?  What needs to happen is to translate it from written word to screen in the same way one translates from one language to another.  The words don't translate exactly, so you have to take the meaning of the sentence in one language and reword it in a sentence of the other language.  In no way would a good translator throw out the meaning of the original sentence.

With that in mind, one needs to look at the structure of a historical book, and the structure of a screenplay.  A historical book tells about the background of the characters involved, what brought them to the present, and dwells on individual moments to give details about each one.  A book can also jump around in time to give information about a person or a place.  A film is much more linear, and the story needs to keep moving with no time to stop and dwell on anything.  Yet we still want to know more about the characters so we care about them.  So it's important to find ways to slip in information about them as it's going along through organic actions we see on screen.

As an example of how I did this in The Great Heist, when I introduced Max Towle I combined several times he was in a courtroom performing his wild antics.  These incidents had taken place over many years, some of which happened after the incidents in the story.  But we're not going to jump through all those time periods and the audience needs to know in a couple minutes what this guy is all about.  So, those elements get combined.

As I wrote the script, I kept the book open, writing what was happening, but then translating it to the language of film; combining events or altering them to give the emotional impression of what happened rather than trying to portray the exact thing.

I recently saw this in a movie called The Death of Stalin.  The events of the story are very accurate, but many of the specifics are exaggerated to emphasize the absurdity of what occurred.  A story about decades of tragedy is thus transformed into an absurdist comedy while the historical accuracy of it all is kept intact.