|
Drama as Endangered SpeciesCynthia's Column March 2003 When my sister and I went to see White Oleander, I was surprised to see only two other people in the theatre. Granted it was a matinee. In half a dozen years movie prices for a matinee in our neighborhood have gone from $3.25 to $6.00. Kind of shocking, but $8.00 for one ticket at night is more so. (You know for $8, you can rent a six-month-old blockbuster, the whole family can watch it and have enough left over for burgers.) But aside from the money, we prefer afternoons. (I go to bed at 9 so I can get up at 4:30 to write.) At the end of White Oleander as the lights came up, the couple behind us said, "Well, that was depressing." These words echoed in the empty theatre like a little death knell. I started looking into the state of the Drama as an art form. And it is troubling. Things have been slipping for awhile. Starting in New York (many trends do start there) Broadway plays gave way to Broadway Musicals. Now in a year, about the only dramatic plays you will see on Broadway are Irish imports, the occasional British import, or the Star Vehicle with a limited run. Paul Newman in Our Town at the moment. Or Madonna in something. Nicole Kidman taking her clothes off for six weeks in a daring new Brit Import. New American dramas? Practically disappeared. Even Neil Simon, the most successful American playwright of the last century, can't get a play produced on Broadway any more, and one of the Broadway theatres is named after him! Then the T.V. Movie went from herds to a handful. The biggest producers of them, like CBS and Showtime, cut their development by much more than half. Replaced by "Reality Shows" (emphasis on the quotation marks) and sit coms. We also have one hour dramas, but most of them aren't dramas. They're mini action movies or suspense thrillers. They center on crisis and catastrophe, not characters. Thank God for The West Wing, my personal favorite, as you may have read. A Sidebar here: Our dramatic playwrights, like Aaron Sorkin, David Mamet, William Mastrosimone, well pretty much all of them, since their plays are not getting the success they deserve, are migrating to film and television writing. And we can't blame them. Playwrights, like poets, can no longer make a living writing plays. Which leaves us with movies. I think it's gotten worse since 9/11. We don't want to feel depressed. We don't go to the movies to cry. Hopefully the purpose of a good drama is to take us through the reenactment of emotional, serious stories that allow us to experience catharsis and hopefully redemption or hope played out in such a way that we get to live it vicariously. Be proxy. It is a form that has been with us as long as we have been a civilized species. I was recently sent the list of all the American movies made last year. The Writers Guild sends it out so its members can vote on the best scripts for the WGA Awards. So we have a list we can use to tally up the score. Dramas, comedies, action adventure, horror etc. For the first time, I couldn't find five Original Screenplays that I really wanted to vote for. Original Screenplays, meaning those not based on written material such as novels, plays, magazine articles etc. Last year, 2002, there were 110. About 100 of these were Action, Horror, Suspense or Comedies. And about a dozen were dramas. (This number may be slightly higher because about 20 of them I never heard of. And I read Entertainment Weekly and Premiere. So these were probably low budget Indies that didn't play Portland.) Even with the benefit of the doubt there are only a handful. Two of them, we are proud to say, were written by Portland boys. Mike Rich's The Rookie, and Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven. (My other 3 votes went to Changing Lanes, 8 Mile and My Big Fat Greek Wedding.) Dramas fared a bit better in the Adapted Screenplay category. Of a total of only 90, about 25 are dramas. And in this category, I had to whittle my favorites down from 9 to 5. (I know you want to know so I'll tell you, I voted for Chicago, The Hours, Insomnia, 25th Hour and White Oleander.) (Okay, if you really want to know, the four runners up were: About A Boy, The Bourne Identity, Catch Me If You Can and The Quiet American.) Some of the dramas cross over into other categories. Science Fiction in Solaris for example. But that's ok. This Column is to defend the Drama, even if it has action or special effects as a side dish, not the main course. The main course being humans as opposed to hardware and explosions. So by counting things don't look too bad. But it's deceptive. Because you're not going to see Dramas. The size of the audience in The Hours and 25th Hour was a little better than for White Oleander, but not much. Let's look at the Box (office) Scores: Of the top 50 moneymakers for 2002: Action/Adventures: 19 Comedies: 20 Suspense/Horror: 4 Drama: 7. (One of these, 8 Mile, owes its status to Music crossover.) Not so bad, 'cause we beat out Horror, right? But what are the money marks? (Domestic and Foreign grosses combined.) Action/Adventure: 6.23 Billion dollars. Comedy: 3.25 Billion dollars. Drama: 757 Million dollars. You know the difference between a million and a billion? A million seconds is 11½ days. A billion seconds is 31½ years. Spider Man, the top grossing movie of the year made more than all of the Dramas in the top fifty combined. Sadly of the 7 Dramas to make the top fifty, there was only one with a female in a leading role. 8 Mile, Road to Perdition, The Rookie, John Q, Insomnia, and Changing Lanes were pretty much 100% guys. Unfaithful, #46, had Diane Lane starring. In other words all those wonderful performances by Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore and Michelle Pfeiffer didn't make the cut. We'll be lucky to see the like in 2003, and it'll be a miracle if we see any depth at all in 2004. Brilliant work is being done and we need to support it. The Hours was a fascinating book, which I enjoyed. But like several of the critics, I agree that it is even a better film. David Hare, the playwright, adapted the script and found powerful ways to visually integrate these three stories. It is a beautiful piece of work. For my money, The 25th Hour is the best work Spike Lee has done. From the writing to the acting to the graceful and intelligent way he lets the story unfold, it feels absolutely real and true. And powerful. Set against the backdrop of recent post 9/11 New York City, it is depressing. But I feel better for having seen it. Edward Norton does work here worthy of the highest honors. He is one of our American gems. Here is where all Americans get to vote. And your vote has as much impact as anyone else's. If a new serious film is released, go see it. If you wait until it comes out on video, you'll save a few bucks, but after awhile they'll stop making those movies. They make what sells. If, like me, you dread opening the Friday paper to see the only movies playing involve guys in drag joining a sorority, huge spiders and Vin Diesel out- snowboarding an avalanche, that's depressing. Only you can prevent mindless junk at the multiplexes. And when only one out of 200 movies released this year is a musical and it is as terrific as Chicago, you should vote with your feet. Get up, get out and go see it. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |