Film Courage: When does the rule don't be boring come into play?
Richard Walter, Author/Screenwriter/Former Screenwriting Chair at UCLA: From beginning
to end. The least we want is not to be bored. I mean I go to the movies and see screeners
scandalously I'm going less and less the theaters and looking more and more screeners. I used to
feel guilty about not going to the theaters. Now I feel guilty about not screening the screeners
and and the the reason is usually I am bored. I think most art is is pretty bad, most paintings,
most sculpture, most literature, most music is lousy. Now that also may seem like a cynical and
a dark thing to say but it's the opposite of that. The truth is that the stuff that is contemporary,
much of it is going to be pretty bad. Some of it will be brilliant. What happens is
that the bad stuff falls away. I was in New York not too terribly long ago and I was in
the Museum of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (one of my favorite museums) and I didn't see
a single painting there that wasn't timeless and eternal, that didn't deserve to be there
and you could get the impression from that that paintings are somehow worthy all the time. Well
you don't realize (a lot of people don't realize) is that for every painting that hangs at the Met,
there are 10,000 stupid, worthless, jerky, amateur paintings. Now there's nothing wrong…I think it's
wonderful that people try to paint and try to be creative and took a shot at it but it's unusual
that it's worth bothering somebody else about, that is to say there's something in the work that
merits the attention and the consideration of the time of an audience, an observer.
In film, because it is contemporary, even more so television because it's in our face now,
there hasn't been the chance for the stuff the bad stuff to drop away. So we think that it's uniquely
bad when it isn’t, it's just as bad as other as other art. Fortunately, the little bit of really,
really good stuff is enough to change your life and make it worth engaging all of it all of the
stuff so that you do see the good stuff. People say “why don't they make good movies now like
they used to in the 30s and the 40s?” Did they make good movies in the 30s and 40s? They did,
there were a lot of really good ones but there were also a lot of lousy ones,
we just don't remember them. I think 50-60 years from now they'll be saying “Why don't
they make good movies like they did back in the early new millennium?” because the people
will have forgotten the Hunger Games. I'm not a big fan of the Hunger Games because I
think people are going to forget about it but they're going to remember the Imitation Game,
they were in two games today. I guess isn't that the movie that yeah about touring and so
the least we want when I say “don't be boring,” I'm saying that's the very least that I want
from a work of art. We're talking now about dramatic narratives. I was at the Louvre in
Paris and I saw the Mona Lisa among others how much time did I spend with it? A minute. If I'd
spent 3 minutes with it that would have been a long time. If I sat quietly now for just a few
seconds you'd feel how heavily time weighs. Do you know? I'm just waiting to see if I get quite
even for two seconds, you get nervous and you jump in and I don't blame, you that's my point.
Film Courage: Sorry.
Richard Walter: No, no, no, not at all, you are helping me. But the most we want from that's
the least we want. I have a deal with my wife which is if I start to nod out during a movie
she's supposed to let me do that unless some snore and am wheezing and spraying everybody
around us and then bringing disgrace and discredit and humiliation upon us. It's up to the movie to
keep me awake and the fact of that matter is that I used to like fight it if I started to
drift during the movie, I would fight it. like you know hey sort of I got breath and try to pay to
choose. Now if I start to drift, that's it, I'm going to nod out in this one. It just not worth
seeing. I've walked into movies where I was really weary hadn't slept very well but it was a good
movie and it woke me up, so that's the least we want, don't be boring and if that's what you do,
that's an incredible achievement but again that's the bottom. What's the top? The top is I want my
life changed completely the way great art does. I want it turned upside down and transmogrified,
I want to be transported and that's what Breaking Bad did to me, that's what the
Sopranos did to me. My life is different and constantly because of my exposure to great art
and that's what great art should do at the top end, it should just change your life forever.