Movies Are Silly!

Hope everyone enjoyed The Academy Awards! Big surprise with <insert controversial award pic later>, huh?! And of course the writing awards went to <insert Original Screenplay> and <insert Adapted Screenplay>, as expected/bit of a surprise there/holy crap, really? Silver Linings Playbook?!? Writing a movie is tough and all the writers of those films nominated deserve some recognition but some writers do not necessarily do their best work all the time. In fact they do some pretty silly things sometimes.

 

Writers

A writer’s job is easy enough to describe. They write (or more likely type in today’s modern world) down the words the actors say and give some light framing for the scene and sometimes some stage direction. In the case of an original screenplay they may also write out the story as well as the screenplay. They are one of the many unseen contributors in the making of a movie but also one of the most important. After all, if there was no script the actors would not know what to say and the director would not be able to tell them what to do. Even The Artist had writers, believe it or not.

But writers are people too. In fact they probably have larger egos than most who work in the background. Because of this they sometimes seem to act out of conceit. Perhaps they feel under appreciated, perhaps they’re sick of slaving in the background. The reasons don’t matter though because the results are, for those actually watching the movie, some pretty silly shit.

 

Self-Insertion

A writer is going to make themselves part of anything they write. “Write from experience” is an oft-repeated and timeless piece of writing advice. However, on occasion, a writer will make their presence a little TOO overt, sometimes even glaringly obvious. This is not good writing and does not make for good movies.

One way writers do this is to have one or more of their characters express their opinions on some social, political or economic issue. It’s usually pretty obvious the writer shares this opinion if one of a few things are true:

1. There was no real reason for this character to express this opinion at this juncture in the plot. This could be anything from a rant done while the character is under the (perhaps unwitting) influence of some sort of psychoactive drug to just a plain old throwaway line that comes out of the blue (“Man I hate when people do that!”). These can be annoying but are usually the least intrusive as they are sometimes funny and do occasionally contribute to your perception and the development of the character saying the line(s) in question.
2. The opinion is expressed with inappropriate emotion or vitriol. Sometimes this could be the actor or director running away with the script or improvising (for better or worse). Unless you were there there’s no way to really tell. However at least part of the time it is the writer (hell, sometimes the actor or director is also the writer) struggling to make some larger point or express their deeply felt opinion in an inappropriate way that is distracting from the actual film that is actually trying to be watched.
3. The character is acknowledged as a “genius” in the architecture of the film and is explicitly expressing their opinion(s). This is probably the most crass and inelegant way to insert yourself into your screenplay or story. To create a character that is meant to see and experience the world in a profound way due to their incredible intelligence or insight and then laden him or her with your expressly non-genius opinions is one of the worst things you can do as a writer short of writing Neo-Nazi propaganda.

 

Breaking the Fourth Wall

Sometimes a writer will have one of the characters or even the plot situation “break the fourth wall.” For those who are unfamiliar with the term, the “fourth wall” is the imaginary and invisible wall on a stage through which we see the characters. In a film it is, of course, the camera and so to you, the viewer, your screen. To “break” this wall is to call overt attention to the fact that you are watching a film or to directly address you, the film-watcher, through your screen. If you are going to do this as a writer it had better be goddamn funny or very fucking poignant. Otherwise it is merely a ham-handed attempt to make your film something it is not and to present yourself as something you are not, namely a great script-writer.

 

Explain it to You Like You’re an Idiot

“Show, don’t tell” is another piece of excellent writing advice that sometimes gets ignored. Any time a character’s line is overly explanatory or is explicitly stating something that should be obvious for someone that is paying attention to the movie it is like nails on a chalkboard for me, and hopefully now you too. Granted, this line may have been edited in by someone else working on the movie to make the film “easier” for audiences to watch but even if that’s the case the writer still took the writing credit and the editor who inserted this unnecessary exposition probably also got a writing credit. This kind of dumbing-down of a movie should not be acceptable. It is blatant pandering to the lowest common denominator of movie-goer and a gigantic detractor from your film and you should feel bad.

 

There you have it folks, some of the silly thing writers do to turn their award-generating piece of astounding and profound genius into a piece of garbage unfit to carry even animal excrement. It almost makes you feel bad for them.

 

-SB