The other day I had a chance to watch the BBC Films comedy “In the Loop”. The movie is flat out hilarious, but it got me thinking – It seems that writers and directors have choices to make about whether or not their film is going to be story driven or genre driven. In “In the Loop” for example, the film is a political satire that is clearly driven by its humor, meaning that the genre of comedy is what dictated how the dialogue was written and how the film was shot and progressed. If the film was more driven by a particular story and it simply used humor as a mechanism to further the story or make the story more interesting, it still would have fit the comedy genre, but I think it might have been written much differently. I’m not entirely sure which is better, but here is the issue in as simple of a question as I could think of – Is it better to write a good story and let the humor help tell the story, or is it better to write good jokes and humorous dialogue and write a story as a backdrop to the jokes? This question works with any genre. For horror – Is it better to write a story and fuse it with horrific elements to tell the story more effectively, or is it better to simply concentrate on scaring the crap out of people and write a story to serve as a backdrop to hold up the horror? For fantasy – Is it better to tell a good story and include fantasy elements for higher entertainment value, or is it better to just make up a wonderful world of awe inspiring characters and special effects and use the story as a secondary element that helps put your fantastical world on display (Avatar)? I haven’t put too much thought into this quite yet, but it’s intriguing to think about.
Seven more movies in for the year:
Julie and Julia
Shutter Island
An education
Detective
The wolfman
In the loop
I'm going to nominate you for a star in Hollywood's "Walk of Fame" for singlehandedly supporting the film industry with your breathtaking pace of movie watching. You go Danny.
ReplyDeleteOk funny stuff aside lets tackle your Genre vs. Stories conundrum. I think if you have a story to tell it doesn't matter what genre you use to advance it. If the story is good enough then whatever genre you choose the joy, bitterness, pathos, love, triumph or heartbreak will be distilled from it. Let's take "Amadeus" for example. A monumental dramatic biopic of the great Mozart. Yet it is spiced with riblad humor to help flesh out the Mozart that was unfamiliar to us. (Yes, fart jokes in a film that won eight Oscars.) Or, at the end of the movie where a broken and pathetic Salieri is being wheeled away absolving all the "mediocrities" amoungest him. That's funny, in an ironic way, it exposes the character for what he is and the tradegy that became of Mozart.
Perhaps that is all a little convoluted. Let's take "The Hangover" a straight comedy. Very funny, but what do we learn from it? Something more dramatic. Brotherhood and perseverance.
Forbidden Planet, my favorite sci-fi movie, doesn't work because it has spaceships and monsters. It works because it is a story of the depths of human frailty, the depth of madness and the lengths we'll go to protect our selfish desires. It's said that "Planet" is derived from Shakespeare's, "The Tempest". Certanly Will Shakespeare new a thing or two about advancing a story through comedy or tragedy.
OK, that was a lot. I'm choosing story over genre I hope my defense made enough sense to you. Tell me what you think.
i really think i agree with you dave, but i think there might be an exception. was dumb and dumber really about anything? i feel like it was mostly just built for humor, but it worked. i laugh every time i watch it. i think genre driven films can work on occasion, but in general i think youre right. story focus is better.
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