Over at
The Guardian,
Mark Ravenhill - best known for his play,
Shopping and Fucking - writes a typically incendiary, rabble-rousing piece on “a sinister conspiracy no one's talking about ...spreading through movies, television drama, fiction writing for adults and children. It's beginning to creep into the theatre. It's a cult with thousands of glassy-eyed members. It's poisoning more and more of our culture. It's called
Story. And I want you to help me put an end to it.”
Ravenshill does not mince his words on
Robert McKee's seminal screenwriting book, and continues:
“Story could only have come out of America, birthplace of Fordism. By assembling cars on a production line, a cheap, reliable product was made available to millions of consumers. A few decades later, the same principles were applied to McDonald's. Individuality was sacrificed, but in exchange the customer got a cheap meal and a brand that was recognisable and reliable anywhere in the world.
It was only a matter of time before the same principles were applied to Hollywood films. By the 1980s, the studios had created a blueprint for the perfect film, a tool by which any script could be analysed and "improved". The aim was to produce a product that was as reliable as a McDonald's burger.”
Ravenshill's solution? A mass book-burning. Read the whole piece
over here.
# posted by Nick Dawson @ 6/25/2007 09:34:00 AM
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