Genres

Visitors Review

Robert 2012-05-21 14:17:15

All Business, No Art

This documentary about screenwriters is engaging and informative.We learn how difficult it is to break in to the business, and the knocks and kicks a writer must take even after he has arrived. The anecdotes and stories are engaging but redundant. What we don't learn and what would have made this a more complete film is the craft and process of of screenwriting. Perhaps a writer describing how he conceived and struggled to create a scene, then show the scene itself. All business, no art.

tedg 2012-05-21 09:29:27

Religion

I've been very lucky in finding these strangely structureddocumentaries.Here is a film about writing films. We luckily encounter a large numberof screenwriters, some of whom I admire a great deal.We have a quick shuffle among them, with the assembly being quite a bitmore coherent and engaging than staying. This by itself is a remarkableeffect. Almost all of these people are master storytellers and they arespeaking about something they have examined thoroughly. Each has theirown narrative they have created about who they are and how they fitinto the machinery of this collaborative art. They assume that whatthey have honed will be fascinating to us.But it isn't. It simply isn't. We learn that writing is hard, thebusiness is brutal. You and your art get no respect. It is oftenunbearable and some accomplished writers simply graduate out of therole. None of these storytellers do much other than decorate thesecomplaints. It becomes obvious early in the game that this is stillinteresting to watch because the filmmaker jumps around, composing hisown narrative out of these interviews. No one bit is kept longer than aminute or so. It is a masterpiece of composition, editing and justplain deep listening. It is a folded story that says in two ways that the writer is thebeginning of the adventure, the generator of first ideas, but is notthe filmmaker.So that's all good. Don't expect a single phrase about writing itself.This is all about the business, the selling and the commerce. There aresome people here that I really would like to know better. I did not andthis will frustrate you too.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.