Thursday, August 8, 2013

CBGB (Movie Trailer)


Right... so, a bit shit, eh? I'm getting tired of these hacky, overly self-conscious biopics that pretty much telegraph "HEY, IMPORTANT HISTORY OVER HERE!" in every single scene. There are many divergent methods of crafting a good - even great - biopic, but one thing that will ensure you don't hit the mark is by feeding your characters deliberately understated quips, the kind that only work if the actors are openly aware how everything is going to pan out all along. 

This is simply wrong. Your characters can't seem like they know the end game while they're still knee deep in the thick of the narrative. That's not ivory tower prescriptivism, by the way, if you're doing this with your writing no one you take seriously will ever commend you on your work. "Show don't tell" is hardly controversial advice.

Christ, just look at that trailer. "The name of this band is Talking Heads". Oh shit! There was a live album by that same title! Reference!

I kind of feel like we've slipped into a Pavlovian rabbit hole, where both context and execution have become expendable and all that's really required of a filmmaker is to evoke a totemic image, whereupon collectively as a society we are all expected to instantly devolve into Orgasm Guy from the old SNL skits.

Man, we're fucked.


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