Archive for November, 2007
Stories Are Communication
Stories are a form of communication. Like all art & entertainment.
If the audience doesn’t get the message, you failed. I’ve been arguing with fellow creatives about the endings to The Mist and No Country for Old Men. Let me say this first, I think they are both good endings and it is not the endings themselves that have to change.
My problem is the endings don’t work. What the creators were trying to communicate is not coming across the way it was meant. How do I know?
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Sacrifice In Stories
Do you like happy endings? Or do you like tragedy? Does the hero have to ride off into the sunset, having saved the day and living happily ever after? Or are you okay with the hero or heroes dying in order to accomplish their goal?
For me it’s all of the above. I like it all, on one condition; The sacrifices have to be meaningful.
I don’t read stories or watch movies to find out that change is impossible and the hero ultimately fails. And yet storytellers still pull these kind of shenanigans.
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The Myth of Formula
In the unusual amount of freedom allowed to me by the Thanksgiving break, I managed to see The Mist and No Country for Old Men, both movies adapted from stories by popular authors.
I’ve read The Mist short story by Stephen King, but haven’t read No Country for Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy of “The Road” fame.
Both involve strong characters stuck in sticky dilemmas, forced to make hard choices which the audience may or may not agree with. But wait! Doesn’t the title of this thread imply this post was about Hollywood and formula?
Well here it is; Formula is officially dead. Or maybe it never existed. Love it or hate it, these movies break a couple fundamental rules. Rules that, if there were such a thing as The Formula, are clearly being violated in Hollywood left and right.
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