“Mama
always said that life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re
gonna get”. Almost ten years after this movie’s release, chances are you can
still remember that these words came from the movie Forrest Gump. What
makes movies like Forrest Gump so memorable are those one-line killers;
those few, simple words that seem to completely embody the spirit of the movie
and sum it up perfectly. But without screenplays, these memorable movie lines would
simply cease to exist. So how do you craft a screenplay so that twenty or even
thirty years later, people are still able to recognize lines from it? This is a
question that Dan Elish was unable to find the answer to in his book The
Craft of Writing Screenplays.
There has always been a sense of
wonderment surrounding movies. The booming sound created by the theater’s surround-sound
system, the enormous concession stands that could just as easily be mistaken
for a sport’s arena, and most importantly, the amazing smell of freshly popped
popcorn with melted butter that slowly engulfs every kernel with its
cholesterol-filled goodness. All of these things can be described in one,
simple phrase: “movie magic.” That wondrous sense of “movie magic” is no doubt
essential to a movie. So shouldn’t this magic and feeling of nostalgia transfer
over to the process of writing a screen play as well? This important element to
screenplay writing is what Elish’s book severely lacks descriptions of.
Throughout his book, Elish gives nothing more than a generic formula for
writing a screenplay. Not once does Mr. Elish mention anything about the
creative aspect of screenplay writing. What on earth would have happened to the
movie industry if for years screenwriters had stuck to Elish’s movie writing formula?
The classic movie Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back would’ve simply
ended with Darth Vader being just another villain, not the father of our
favorite Jedi Knight. Quentin Tarantino would be out of a job, and Nicolas Cage
would star in a normal movie for once (okay, well perhaps not everything would
be bad). For example, Elish spends quite a few pages discussing what he calls
“the three-act structure”. He begins to describe how specific events must
happen during an exact time in the screenplay, “in Act 1 you set up the setting,
characters, time period…” and then “… In act 2 your character should have one,
main goal…” (38). All of this advice seems eerily similar to a math equation I
would use to find the area of a circle inscribed into a triangle moving twenty
meters per second of the face of the moon. Perhaps that was a bit too extreme,
but hopefully you see what I mean. By describing and advising young writers to
approach screenwriting in this conformed manner without even mentioning the
creative aspect to these wonderful stories, Elish has officially made the
infamous no-no list of how-to books.
However, before I sound like a lonely critic with only my
cats to keep me company, there were a few positive things about Elish’s book.
The man does seem to have a genuine passion for movies and more importantly the
sacred text of screenwriting, and for that, I applaud him. There was actually
one other thing that Elish did well in his book. He encouraged the readers of
this book that it doesn’t take a J.K. Rowling to craft a memorable screenplay. In
fact, he leaves the readers with a very hopeful message as he describes how “if
you write a… well-structured screenplay… the next script that they [Hollywood
producers] love might just be yours” (81). Never once does Elish discourage his
readers from attempting to write screenplays and for that, I again applaud him.
While Elish’s love for movies didn’t necessarily come across in his book, it
did seem as if he not only wanted his readers to succeed in their movie
endeavors, but that he also has a love for movies equivalent to that of a young
boys love towards bubble wrap.
As this review comes to an end, I’d like to offer a
final, scholarly rating of this book. If a penguin discovering the lost land of
Atlantis is a rating of fantastic and a dinosaur finding true love is a rating
of awful, then I deem this book a chicken clucking on the Empire State
Building. While Elish’s book is overall forgettable due to its content, or lack
there-of, the fact that the author is very genuine in his advice slightly
redeems the book and makes it bearable for aspiring screenwriters from all
walks of life.
Firstenberg, Jean Picker. "AFI's
100 Years... 100 Movie Quotes." Www.afi.com. American Film
Institute, 2005. Web. 19 Nov. 2013.
<http://www.afi.com/100years/quotes.aspx>.
Elish, Dan. The Craft of Writing Screenplays.
New York: Marshall Cavendish Benchmark, 2012. Print.
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