Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
I have received a mountain of e-mail in the past week asking me to comment in some way on the possibility of a WGA strike. I joined the WGA in 1995 after optioning a one-act play I wrote with Harry Lime to Showtime Networks. I have very strong feelings about the way the guild operates, and about whether we should strike, and about the issues on the negotiation table right now... and those opinions, frankly, don't belong on AICN. When I'm here, I'm on the other side of the table, a fan just like all of you, someone who still believes that every time I fork over my $9 at the box-office, I deserve something special in return. Still, there's all those letters, all those readers asking that I comment in some way.
What I'd like to do is simply pass the mic to someone who already said everything I have to say, and he said it better. The sad thing is, he said it decades ago, and every syllable still holds true. So... here he is... the voice of reason... Raymond Chandler:
"The impulse to perfection cannot exist where the definition of perfection is the arbitrary decision of authority. That which is born in loneliness and from the heart cannot be defended against the judgment of a committee of sycophants. The volatile essences which make literature cannot survive the cliches of a long series of story conferences. There is little magic of word or emotion or situation which can remain alive after the incessant bone-scraping revisions imposed on the Hollywood writer by the process of rule by decree. That these magics do somehow, here and there, by another and even rarer magic, survive and reach the screen more or less intact is the infrequent miracle which keeps Hollywood's handful of fine writers from cutting their throats.
Hollywood has no right to expect such miracles, and it does not deserve the men who bring them to pass. Its conception of what makes a good picture is still as juvenile as its treatment of writing talent is insulting and degrading. Its idea of "production value" is spending a million dollars dressing up a story that any good writer would throw away. Its vision of the rewarding movie is a vehicle for some glamorpuss with two expressions and eighteen changes of costume, or for some male idol of the muddled millions with a permanent hangover, six worn-out acting tricks, the build of a lifeguard, and the mentality of a chicken-strangler. Pictures for such purposes as these, Hollywood lovingly and carefully makes. The good ones smack it in the rear when it isn't looking."
"Moriarty" out.
