Virtually every film that is poorly received critically, and often

commercially, is a victim primarily of one thing: bad writing. By "writing"

I mean the combined work involved in using words for plotting,

characterization, dialogue, thematic development, originality, etc. It is

easy to think of many unambitiously executed films that have succeeded and

survived because they were well-written. It's much less easy to think of

poorly written films that have anything to recommend them besides immediate

box office appeal (allowing that "Titanic was well-written) although many

poorly-written films are teachable and (too-frequently) taught.



The primary reason many films are poorly written is not only because many

are written for children, action- and sex-hungry drudges or tired couch

potatoes. The main reason is that few people really read anymore. The

skills and sensitivity needed to recognize and respond to a "well-written"

work - which often requires prolonged time, solitude, leisure, automatic

comparison to a canon of quality, practise in using literacy or literary

skills (even in common daily work) - are not developed. Many screen/tv

writers understand this and know they must appeal to viewers who not only

lack reading knowledge but to viewers whose chief "literary" references and

are to other movies and non-verbal cues - which is why understanding many

non-verbal formats is called "literacy."



This situation is very unlikely to change, though the persistence of

"independent" filmmakers will probably endure as long as filmmaking is

affordable at some level - perhaps even increase, though with increasing

idiosyncrasy, as home computers enable individuals to produce what only

groups and corporations could do previously - desktop production imitating

desktop publishing.



An era of well-written cinema will become - as it already shows signs of

doing - a historical not an aesthetic phenomenon, perhaps encompassing the

period 1929-1980, with  exceptions made for silent films, documentaries,

animations and of course the independents, which may also suffer from a

constant erosion of a cinematic context that depends on the values of

literacy. Some of the great theorists and critics - Bordwell, Benjamin,

Farber, Ray, Everson, Kaplan -  will always be able to portray almost any

film as a brilliant, contingent, complex creation, and part of a tradition

or movement the elements of which have greater implications than its

examples ever could. For these people we can be - hesitatingly - grateful.

Even as their criticism begins to overpower the experience of film going,

they are only doing, for us, what many filmmakers have long ago abandoned -

reconstituting imagery with literacy.

Paul B. Wiener

Special Services Librarian

SUNY at Stony Brook

Melville Library

516/632-7253

fax: 516/'632-7116

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