Storyselling

I used to have a blog called nilblogette, which was mostly reviews and descriptions of old, rare, or bad movies, but I let it fall the wayside as I got more involved in work. I've grown up a little since then, or maybe I'm just guiltier about having down-time, and I spend less time thinking about movies no one has seen and more time thinking about those closer to the mainstream. For instance, nowadays, the horror movies I tend to throw on constantly are JAWS, POLTERGEIST and THE SHINING, rather than THE TENANT, SUSPIRIA, and SSSSSS. For a long time, I've been missing having an outlet for my musings, especially ones about scripts, writing, the entertainment industry, and being a script reader, which I never really discussed on nilblogette, and, in light of that, I've finally decided it is okay to have a new blog - I'd call it a sequel, rather than a remake or a re-imagining.

I've been fond of the idea of Storyselling for awhile now. Industry people love to go on about the importance of "story", because it makes them sound sensitive and artistic. That Q&A auto-response makes screenwriters put all their emphasis on it, despite the fact that no one is too specific about what "story" is, or that what reaches screens tends to have almost nothing to do with "story" and everything to do with selling. Whether I'm reading for new writers or the tops of the industry, I find myself primarily noting that a script has too much story or too much selling, and my job tends to be telling people how to find a better balance between the two. Storyselling obviously isn't a new idea, just a new word.

I really do believe both story and selling are important - I'm not just shining on my employers. I hate reading, or seeing, movies where every line was chosen for its dollar value, which makes most modern films feel like expensive slop buckets, though that can be fun, as long they don't actually make money or garner prestige. But I also hate reading or watching movies that play like diary entries, when I feel like the artist believes the audience should be there for him more than he is there for the audience.

That said, my personal favorite movies tend to be mixed bags, and I've often said that two-and-a-half star movies are the best ones, knowing full-well I'm hyperbolizing. Two-and-a-half star movies tend to be the ones that critics don't know what to do with - they are either a cheap concept executed impressively well, or a prestigious concept or filmmaker executing with too much edge or cheese, because the mismatch makes me think. In the absence of complete originality on every level, which almost never happens, I'll take a movie that's hard to label, but has some good elements. Those tend to be my favorite scripts to read too, even if I can't fully recommend them, because there is a lot more to analyze than with a script that is entirely good or bad.

The ideas of Storyselling and two-and-a-half-stars describe my sensibility about pretty much everything. Nilblogette was proudly a two-and-a-half-star blog, and this one surely will be too, but of an inverse sort. Nilblogette was deeply niche, given to more academic analysis than the subject matter probably deserved, yet interested in chasing hits and becoming a semi-popular blog, just to see if it could. (I'm pretty over movies that behave that way.) I imagine Storyselling will have more mainstream subject matter, presented with more edge or cheese than is typical, and not too concerned with readership. (I'm now mostly into movies like that, if only because I'm 29 and am getting ever lamer as I approach 30.) Nevertheless, most people will probably check in for tidbits from a longtime agency script reader, and that's perfectly fine too. I've just saved them the trouble with this post of having to guess at my bias and tastes.