BURN BEFORE READING
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.
