Film Courage: Where does the rule don’t be boring come into play?
UCLA Screenwriting chair Richard Walter: From the beginning to end with the least we want
is to not be bored when I got to the movies and see screeners (scandalously were are seeing
less and less and looking at more and more screeners).
I used to feel guilty not going to the theaters now I feel guilty not screening the screeners
and the reason is that I am bored.
I think most art is pretty bad, most paintings, most sculpture, most literature and music
is lousy.
Now that might seem like a cynical and 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 the bad stuff falls away.
I was in New York not too terribly long ago and at 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 some how worthy all of the time.
But what we don’t realize all of the time (and what a lot of people don’t realize)
is that for every painting that hangs at the Met there are 10,000 worthless, jerky, amateur
paintings.
Now I think it’s wonderful that people try to paint and try to be creative and take a
shot at it but it’s unusual that it’s worth bothering someone else about.
That is to say there is something in the work that merits the time and consideration of
an audience (an observer).
In film because it is contemporary, because it is in our face now there hasn’t been
a chance for the bad stuff to drop away so we think it’s uniquely bad when it isn’t
and it’s just as bad as other art.
Fortunately the little bit of really, really good stuff is enough to change your life and
make it worth engaging so that you do see all of the good stuff.
People say “Why don’t they make good movies now like in the 30’s and the 40’s!”
Did they make good movies now like in the 30’s and the 40’s?
They did, there were a lot of good ones.
But there were also a lot of lousy ones.
We just don’t remember them.
I think 50 or 60 years from now they will be saying “Why don’t they make good movies
now like in they did in the early New Millennium.”
Because people will have forgotten THE HUNGER GAMES.
I’m not a big fan of THE HUNGER GAMES, I think people
are going to forget about them.
But they are going to remember THE IMITATION GAME (the “games” today I guess).
Isn’t that the movie about touring and so on.
So the least we want, when I say don’t be boring, that’s the very least I want from
a work of art we are talking now about dramatic narrative.
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 had spent three minutes with it that would have been a long time.
If I had sat quietly for just a few seconds I would feel how heavily time ways.
I’m just waiting for…see if I get quiet for just two seconds you get nervous and you
jump in…see that’s my point.
Film Courage: Okay…sorry.
I’m part of the experiment.
Richard Walter:
That’s okay, you are helping me.
But that’s the most we want, that’s the least we want.
I have a deal with my wife which is if I start to nod out during the movie, she’s supposed
to let me do that unless I’m snoring and wheezing and spraying everybody around me
and bringing disgrace and discredit and humiliation upon.
It’s up to the movie to keep me awake and the fact of the matter is that I used to fight
it if I started to drift during the movie, I used to fight it like “Hey!”
And take a deep breath and pay attention.
Now if I start to drift, that’s it!
I’m going to nod out on this one.
It isn’t 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 all you do, that’s an incredible achievement.
But again that’s the bottom.
What’s the top?
And the top is I want my life changed completely the way great art does.
I want it turned upside and transmogrified.
I want to be transported and that’s what BREAKING BAD did to me, that’s what THE
SOPRANO’s did to me.
My life is different constantly because of that exposure to that great art.
And that’s what great art should do at the top end.
It should just change your life forever.