John August and Shazam

Hollywood screenwriter John August wrote a little last month about his adaptation of the superhero Shazam (aka Capt. Marvel) and pissed a lot of people off with this little bit of insight.

DC publishes hardcover anthologies that gather up decades’ worth of Captain Marvel comics. If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, these would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the same realization I encounter trying to watch The Honeymooners or a black-and-white movie: Wow. Old things suck.

Yes he was being deliberately provocative so people like me would write about it on their blogs and everyone on the internet would get all crazy. However, his next post on the matter does little to quell my feelings of uneasiness about his opinions.

[W]hat frustrates me is when society insists on elevating and fawning over these non-masterpieces simply because they were part of some mythical Golden Age. To me, that includes The Honeymooners. Sorry. I can understand why it was groundbreaking, and the enormous challenge of creating a live show, and why it was seminal. But I don’t care. It doesn’t connect for me whatsoever, and I’m too honest to fake any interest in it. Thus, to me, it sucks.

So there you have it folks. This is my gripe. Not that he prefers new comics to old comics (though how he could dismiss C.C. Beck is a mystery to me) or that he's going to be writing a superhero movie and I'm afraid he's going to screw it up (I never cared about Cap. Marvel much but I'm pretty sure it just should not be made into a movie)
No, what matters to me is the lack of analysis involved in his statement. You'd think someone with a job crafting stories would understand that "it sucks" isn't a critically defensible point of view. He admits that he can see aspects of what makes a show like the Honeymooners appealing but he has no personal connection to it. This is much different than declaring it a waste of everyone's time with an offhand "it sucks." That's the kind of thing you say to your friends when you're thirteen, not when you're a well paid screenwriter, not in print anyway, and certainly not when you're the guy that wrote that Charley's Angels movie.
Anyway, my point here is that a creative person should probably have well defined analytic techniques that they can apply to their own work. Declaring something inferior because of your own personal inabilities to "connect" with a given work is damaging to the creative process and will probably result in work that is lackluster and shallow.

The War

This is an interesting question. Do public watchdog groups have the right to change a work of art?
This story poses an interesting and frustrating question. In essence it says that Ken Burns, the famous documentarian, has neglected to include Hispanics in his 14 hour long documentary The War and several Latino advocacy groups are calling foul and demanding changes to the film.

On one hand we have a group of concerned citizens with a noble cause demanding inclusion in a film that purports examining an historical event in an ostensibly even-handed manner. The group is right on many levels; Hispanics are an underrepresented culture in American history and it is important to acknowledge the advances our country has made because of them.

On the other hand you have a film maker that set forth with specific goals when documenting WWII. Burns only interviewed people from four small towns in America and took six years interviewing those people and finding documentary footage and researching their stories. to change the film now would involve hunting down Latino war veterans from any of those four towns, researching their stories, finding supporting documentary footage and lengthening the film significantly. None of this is a reason not to include Hispanic war veterans though, if a little extra work was all it took there would probably be no debate.

The real problem lies in giving outside influences the power to edit films, even historical documentaries. Should lobby groups be able to influence the media to such an extent? Should squeaky wheels really get the grease? even if those squeaky wheels have a good point? What will happen if a group with less noble goals begins lobbying for changes in documentaries?

As you might have guessed I have no answers to those questions. I believe that documentaries should accurately represent the lives of it's subjects but if the subject is as broad as WWII then it's inevitable that some people will be left out.

feel free to leave comments if you have any thoughts on the subject. Anything hateful of idiotic will, of course be deleted.

wish in one hand...

European screenwriters issue manifesto... world yawns.

• The screenwriter is an author of the film, a primary creator of the audiovisual work.

• The indiscriminate use of the possessory credit is unacceptable.

• The moral rights of the screenwriter, especially the right to maintain the integrity of a work and to protect it from any distortion or misuse, should be inalienable and should be fully honored in practice.

"What we tried to do by naming it the 'manifesto' is to challenge the international film community and to start a discussion about what has gone wrong and how we could set it right," says Christina Kallas, president of the federation and a screenwriter, story editor, author, producer and teacher. "It is a step in our campaign to give the screenwriter her rightful place, as in the theater and, indeed, in any other form of writing. We hope that it will be an important tool in our efforts to develop and enhance the status of screenwriters."

this thing seems to be getting some real backing from certain film industry honchos. It seems a little caustic and reactionary to me but whatever makes screenwriters feel better about themselves I guess. I’ve personally always thought of a manifesto as that thing the Unabomber wrote.

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The Austin film festival is coming relatively soon so you better get those submissions in. I’ve never been to Austin but the Butthole Surfers have and any film festival they’d go to I’d go to too.

(please not that I have no idea if the butthole surfers will be there this year... I'm just saying is all.)