John August

Rant

Cut-scenes do not a videogame make

Prince of Persia, Rant, Story and Plot

Screenwriter and videogame developer Jordan Mechner, who is writing the Prince of Persia movie I’m executive-producing, has a [great opinion piece](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/story.html
) in the new Wired magazine. In it, he argues that videogame-makers need to stop trying to ape Hollywood blockbusters, and instead focus on creating _playable_ stories:

In a movie, the story is what the characters do. In a game, the story is what the player does. The actions that count are the player’s. Better game storytelling doesn’t mean producing higher-quality cinematic cutscenes; it means constructing the game so that the most powerful and exciting moments of the story occur not in the cutscenes but during the gameplay itself.

You can see the whole article [here](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.04/story.html).

Why the Matrix trilogy ultimately blows

Geek Alert, Rant

Following a link from [digg](http://digg.com/movies/An_Engineer_s_Guide_to_The_Matrix), I just finished reading a [lengthy explanation](http://denbeste.nu/Chizumatic/tmw/TheMatrix.shtml) of the Matrix trilogy, written by an engineer, who attempts to deconstruct the films on a purely logical level. That is, he looks at what The Architect and The Oracle are trying to do, and how Neo fits into the plan, without any philosophical or pseudo-religious explanations.

I was originally just going to put a link to this in the Off-Topic list, but figured that might be construed as a tacit endorsement of incoherent blockbusters.

Thus, this short rant.

I should preface this by saying the engineer’s last name isn’t Wachowski, so there’s no way of knowing how his speculation fits with the writers’ original intention. But reading his essay, one thing becomes crystal clear: narratively speaking, those movies are a clusterfuck.

I remember going into a pitch meeting with Lorenzo Di Bonaventura at Warner Bros. shortly before Go came out. Before getting down to business, he played me the Matrix trailer. “This movie’s going to blow yours away,” he said. (I’m just barely paraphrasing. The point is, he was kind of a dick about it, and was absolutely right.)

I saw The Matrix in the theater, then bought the DVD, like every third person in America. And loved it.

Sure, there were nits to pick. For one, the idea of “humans as batteries” feels very
first-draft. But even beyond the special effects, there was a really interesting, compelling story. I especially liked the two worlds of it: scary, but you kind of wanted to be there. I even bought the animated Matrix mini-movie DVD, which was enjoyable (if uneven).

So I was psyched to see The Matrix Reloaded. And then disappointed. It felt sluggish and indulgent, with slo-mo dance orgies that didn’t feel like part of the world. But I was more than willing to accept one slow movie to build up for the exciting conclusion that would no doubt be The Matrix Revolutions.

And here’s how I knew that the final movie — and thus the trilogy — didn’t work: When it was over, I had no idea what had happened. Worse, I had no idea how to feel. Hopeful? Despondent? Unsettled? The Oracle and The Architect were having a conversation, and I couldn’t even process it.

Lord knows, I’m not pining for simplicity or tidy answers. I’m happy with some ambiguity. But “incomprehensible” is not a synonym for “clever.”

My friend Rawson has a good phrase for it: “Playing obscurity for depth.” It’s the tendency of a screenplay — or an actor — to make weird choices that the audience won’t understand. The audience, fearing that they just didn’t “get it,” will label the writing or performance brilliant.

But it’s a trap. Once you get away with it, you inevitably do it again. It leads to laziness, which ultimately leads to bad movies. The time, money and energy spent shooting those two movies back-to-back could have been vastly better channeled if the Wachowskis had buckled down and done a few more drafts.

However well-intentioned, I think the second and third Matrix movies were playing obscurity for depth. For whatever reason, I’ve been reluctant to call bullshit on them. Well, bullshit.

Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

First Person, Rant, So-Called Experts

Last night, I had the pleasure of giving a guest lecture at Trinity University in San Antonio. While I speak at various screenwriter-oriented functions fairly often, this was unusual in that the event was university-wide, and the focus wasn’t specifically on film.

Part of the deal was that I had to announce the title of my speech months in advance. I picked, “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur,” figuring that in the intervening months I would think of inspiring examples of how the World of Tomorrow was going to be a wonderland of possibility for the undergraduates in the audience.

But the more I thought about it, the less I wanted to talk about the future. Instead, I wanted to focus on one of the biggest challenges of today: in our celebration of the amateur, we kind of forget what it means to be professional.

As I spoke with various classes before the big presentation, I promised I’d post the whole speech on the site for those students who had night classes. And, of course, for anyone else who might be interested.

Let me warn you: this is __long__. My speech lasted 45 minutes, and that was without a lot of riffing. So if you’d rather read the whole thing as a .pdf, you can find it [here](http://johnaugust.com/Assets/professional.pdf).

. . .

It’s a pleasure to be here talking with you tonight. Over the last two days, I’ve been visiting a lot of classes, talking about screenwriting and movies, and well, basically talking about myself. Which I’m really good at. But when I agreed to give a formal public lecture, one of the requirements was that the presentation actually have a title. By which I mean a topic, a thesis. A point.

It all feels very academic, and I love that. I miss that. None of you will believe me now, but some day you’ll look back on your college careers and be wistful. Nostalgic. Because there’s something comforting about having to write a fifteen page paper on the use of floral imagery in “Pride and Prejudice.”

I think what it is, is that even if you’re completely wrong, it just doesn’t matter that much. For the rest of your life, you’re going to get called on bullshitting. In college, you’re graded on it.

Anyway.

I decided I wanted my lecture tonight to be not strictly about screenwriting, but about writing in general. Because everyone in this room is a writer. You might write screenplays; you might write research papers. You definitely write emails. Every one of you is, and will be, a professional writer in some field.

So I wanted to talk about what that means.

[Read more…] about Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur

If a trade paper has a blog, is it still a trade?

Rant

Question: Would The Hollywood Reporter sneak into Sony Pictures late at night, grab the director’s rough cut of a new movie, then publish a review of it the next morning?

No. They’d lose all credibility and respect of the filmmakers and studio folks who constitute their readership. There would be outrage.

Instead, The Hollywood Reporter (like its fellow “trade” newspaper, Variety) waits to review movies in their finished form — or at least, in a public screening, such as a film festival. The reviews aren’t always positive, but the circumstances surrounding the review are fair.

Would The Hollywood Reporter run a review of a script in production?

Highly doubtful. To my knowledge, they’ve never done so. Likely, that’s because they recognize what a disservice that is to the filmmakers. Movies change significantly over the course of production. Reviewing the screenplay while the movie’s in production would be (in my opinion) worse than reviewing a rough cut, because it’s not acknowledging the role the director, actors and other departments play.

So I was concerned to see this entry in the Hollywood Reporter’s blog:

Thanks to Stax, IGN FilmForce’s resident Bond maven, for this link to a description of the new James Bond script. If you don’t want to read the spoilers, don’t go there!

If you followed the link to IGN, you’d see it’s actually another link to Latino Review, which has the actual article. To be clear: The Hollywood Reporter blog didn’t publish a review of the script. They published a link, which in turn led to another link.

Still, this seemed pretty unusual for The Hollywood Reporter. So I called Anne Thompson, the deputy editor whose picture runs alongside the text on the blog. We had a good conversation about her decision to include the piece, and the challenging distinction between capital-J journalism and what happens on the internet. She was thoughtful and forthright, and ultimately revised the piece to remove the link — one of the real benefits of the digital age.

I consider that specific issue resolved, and thank Anne for attending to it so quickly.

Part of the reason the issue resonated for me is that I’m in the middle (okay, beginning) of writing a public lecture that I’m giving in a few weeks as Trinity University. I had to announce my lecture title months ago, so I picked: “Professional Writing and the Rise of the Amateur.” And this is certainly a good example.

It is easy to empathize with the frustrations of a professional journalist who gets “scooped” by film geeks still in high school. Writing under a pseudonym at Ain’t It Cool News, YoMamasBeeeotch can spill all the dirt on an upcoming James Cameron project, without the burdens of truth, accuracy or grammar. When criticized, these writers generally fall back on the defense of, “I’m not a professional journalist! I’m just a fan who wants great movies!”

The central question of my lecture — for which I don’t currently have a meaningful answer — is what does it mean to be a professional writer? It can’t just be getting paid, because in the age of AdSense, the blogger can out-earn the reporter. It’s not the size of the readership, because many blogs attract more eyeballs than traditional papers do.

My hunch is that the distinction between professional and amateur lies in the implied contract between writer and reader. The professional writer is promising a certain level of accuracy, consistency and forthrightness.

That’s why I chafed at seeing that link in The Hollywood Reporter, when I wouldn’t have blinked an eye if it were in CHUD. But these are murky times.