How many classics would be re-written today?

[Rantanplan]

A thought to throw out there as I sit at the edge of my seat waiting for 24 to begin...

I was browsing the Frequently Asked Forum in the About the Craft Forum --definitely one of the most resource-filled forums, TONS of amazing stuff, but surprisingly no new posts in almost a year --and I came across this passage in a note about loglines posted on 2a by a former dder, in relation to IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE:

For example, many would construct a logline for IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE like this:

A suicidal family man is given the opportunity to see what the world would be like if he had never been born.

However, this is disingenuous, because this story element is not introduced until the final third of the film. Hence, this is not what the story is about. IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is the story of a small town man who yearns to escape his mundane piece of Americana for success in the big city. (His goal, which is internal, is to find success.) Sadly, the script�s third act hook is more intriguing than the throughline of the story. But it would be death for a writer to use the logline above because an executive would expect this hook early in the screenplay and could be disappointed to find it introduced on page ninety instead of page thirty.


A logline cannot simply ignore the first two thirds of the story. However, IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE has such a memorable third act, one must include it in the logline, which could go like this:

A family man struggles to escape small town America for a more successful life in the big city. When his constant efforts fail, he contemplates suicide but his guardian angel visits and the man experiences what the world would be like if he had never been born.

IT�'S A WONDERFUL LIFE is a screenplay that would be severely rewritten today, because modern story executives would insist that the intriguing hook be introduced at the end of the first act and not the beginning of the third. Regardless, this new and improved logline is a more accurate portrait of the actual story boiled down to its base.


(bold mine) (darn, now can't get rid of it)


Now this is interesting info relating to loglines, but more importantly, as it relates to screenwriting, I wonder how many classics would be considered too slow for contemporary audiences and thus seriously rewritten if sold as specs today. Personally I like films that take their time and can thus explore in greater depth things such as character dynamics and smaller moments, although of course I like films that move at a faster pace as well. But in some cases, the frustration, desperation or other driving emotion needs time to build up in order for the action to then become plausible. It can't all happen at page 10 or wherever it's supposed to happen... The question I find interesting is whether there is still room for the slower paced scripts in a high concept genre and how this script in particular would be graded and analyzed by industry professionals today. I mean, sh.........t, here they're talking about pushing the action up an ENTIRE act! So what would Act 3 even be? Thoughts?

For me this hit the nail on the head because I have a script which I feel deserves the long build-up and only really "kicks in" in the third act (but with plenty of entertaining material leading up), but probably that is a bit out of fashion and perhaps my logline comes across as "disingenuous" as per the example above.


But more importantly, I''m also just curious as to how other members feel about the general question, and what other classics come to mind that would also be "severely rewritten" to accomodate modern-day attention spans.

[Biohazard]

The problem isn't the old films, it's the new audience.

I'm in my 20's and I have absolutely no problem watching older films.

[ScriptShadow]

Every. Single. One.

And I'm not joking.

[Slappynipsy]

Wasn't It's A Wonderful Life considered a flop in it's initial box office? I always heard it became a "classic" after they started showing it on TV during Christmas?

[Rantanplan]

So what are we saying here? That aside from the few and the enlightened (screenwriters and their parents), nobody nowadays would appreciate the inherent value in these films?

That totally sucks. But also: how does the Structure Bible apply to these kinds of films? At what point exactly in film history does Film Structure as it is taught today come into effect?

That is what I'm most curious about.

And again: what would the Act 3 be in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, if Act 3 was kicked up to Act 2? What would we miss out on? And would it make the film stronger or weaker?

[12916studios]

A lot of them. And I am going to use TV as my example here.

People today are all "Action Action Sex Action Swearing!" when they go to the movies. That's what they want to see. They don't want something slow and unwinding...carefully constructed with interesting characters. They want Knight Rider 2008. They want CSI. They want mindnumbing escapist fair.

They don't want Lost, or Kings, or anything cerebral. They don't want to think. Movies in the past were, as a whole, much more thoughtful. Movies today...not so much. The pacing in a film from yesteryear would have to be livened up dramatically if it were going to be released in theaters as though from today.

[Rantanplan]

Originally Posted by wilsoneads

Every. Single. One.

And I'm not joking.

OK, see, now that I find interesting (read: alarming), especially, since, saddly, I agree. We can talk about Aristotle and Campbell all we want, but at some point, it has to do with pleasing the audience. And everybody involved in filmmaking agrees that the target audience today is... um, what is it again? Teenagers? Young adults? Isn't the target attention span like 10 years old or something when it comes to advertising? Of course, most films these days are cut at the speed of a TV commercial. Not to mention video games.

So the whole Structure Paradigm: classical in nature, certainly, but the whole "this needs to happen at a certain page number:" geared to an audience with no attention span? Just wondering. Probably Aristotle had adults in mind. As did Hollwyood, actually, until the 70's. According to most theorists, this is when it started to change.

So what of writers who have a sophisticated, adult audience in mind? Are we just completely screwed ??

[Rantanplan]

Originally Posted by 12916studios

A lot of them.
The pacing in a film from yesteryear would have to be livened up dramatically if it were going to be released in theaters as though from today.

Ok, yes, Hallelujah for saying that! It is definitely a question of context / culture / time no matter how many intellectual theories you apply to it. Audiences nowadays EXPECT a certain development on page 10, 20, 30, etc. Aristotle may have not have been so specific. But by god, the filmmaking audience nowadays is

So technically, you could have a kick-ass script.... for the wrong generation... where the script gurus go wrong, is NOT to make that distinction.

[12916studios]

OK, see, now that I find interesting (read: alarming), especially, since, saddly, I agree

Sorry, but I must go OT and mention this... That sentence had WAY too many commas. It made my brain hurt with all the uneeded pauses.

Carry on...

[12916studios]

Actually--if you go back far enough in film history, to the beginning, movies were magnitudes shorter than they are today. They were all short films, in the beginning.

I was just reading an essay about the 1902 Sci-Fi Watershed film: A Journey to the Moon. Made for four grand and the big-budget sci-fi spectacle of its day: 26 minutes long!

The classic Universal horror films were really short, too. Some of them clocking in around 70 minutes.

But that is also quite an invalid argument if you consider that filmmakers back then were constricted by budgetary concerns and the way film was processed back then. With the advent of digital technology, making films is monumentally easier. Though with that ease comes more expense, given what is now physically possibly in special effect.

Plus you must consider that no one had really though of a feature length film. It wasn't people being easily bored...because people, lots of people, sat through The Birth of a Nation in 1915. Now I don't know about you, but I've seen it twice and hated it, not only because of its content, but because it was slow, boring, and way to effing long. According to Wikipedia it was 190 minutes.

But back then, until it got banned, people still watched it...even if they rioted after seeing it.