Mask Scare

social media traps

Popular Misconceptions

Actors are most often the people interviewed in promotion of a movie and actors are usually the most entertaining personalities. Audiences may persist with the idea that movies are made up by actors. It may even get to a point where some actors - if not all - believe that hype. They may think of themselves as Will Farrell, or the cast of a Christopher Guest production, made up of the top comedy names that may not embrace a script. But the craft of a screenplay and serious regard for the written dialogue have suffered over time. There is so much money and politics involved that a screenplay that itself would make a fascinating movie might be compromised for no reason other than competing egos insisting on pissing into the soup. If I have written a screenplay, I really have no genuine interest in trading out my dialogue for someone else's variation. That is by no means a formula for success. Improvisation as an exercise might be great for getting actors some stage time in the theatre, but it is like watching a first draft be written on the fly and it is more of a sport than a final product. There is a halting and self-conscious quality to it. I would rather have someone say no, they don't like a script, than have a mutiny in the middle of a shoot or find out there are undisclosed expectations. Best to provoke the truth, and it can be VERY difficult to pry the truth out of actors who might actually like to be part of a movie - any movie - for experience. Then there is the perception of directors. People from theatre may be in the habit of throwing shade at the term director by referring to a progression of excellent shots as the "cinematography." Frankly, I would rather make a movie with no dialogue at all which demands visuals carry the attention than an all-diaogue film that becomes rote pictures of people talking. In the latter case, the only reason to proceed would be if I like the dialogue and to protect it from arbitrary or political deviations. I can see people with a clear measure of success and status who I can't quite envy because I discover that their writer or director credits should have an asterisk beside them. There is a terrible trend toward looking at the term writer or director in film and saying, "yeah, yeah, nudge, nudge, wink, wink." I once had a Humber College instructor ask what I plan to do after graduation and I mentioned directing my scripts He said, "So you want to pass yourself off as a writer-director." And to this day I am agitated by the cynicism of that comment. I'm not interested in co-writers or co-directors or de facto co-directors or de factor co-writers.