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Violence in Movies
Quentin Tarrantino made violence cool. But surprisingly little violence was shown in
"Reservoir Dogs." As a matter of fact, they never even showed the crime itself - just the
aftermath.
Along those same lines, in "Seven", the crimes scenes were so horrific, filming the acts of
violence themselves were unnecessary as they would have paled in comparison to those
conjured up in the active and diverse imaginations of the audience. The scenes that ramp up
to violence and their aftermath and consequences are always far more dramatic than the
violent acts themselves. On the opposite end of the spectrum is John Woo's "violence" - that
of a stylized ballet.
The general consensus of the panelist was that violent scenes are the easiest to direct:
they don't require good acting, they don't require good dialogue, they don't require
subtext. It's just lazy filmmaking.
They also concurred that to make a violent film marketable, you must make your movie so
irresistible that everyone from the actor, to the director, to the money guys are motivated
to say: "I have to play this part," "I must direct this film," and "I've gotta invest in
this."
Sex and Sensibilities:
Like all other action (including violent scenes), sex is superfluous unless it forwards the
plot. Sex and violence are not special categories: like every other element, they must be
organic to the story - and conflict-ridden. The humanity of the characters should drive the
eroticism. The sexual truths should reveal character or be character-driven.
Filming real sex is simply pornography. And it gets comically boring after a while because
there's no mystery. Real sex in real life is erotic - but it's quite a different story when
it's in 70 millimeters. Reel sex should be masterminded by a deft creator to keep the
audience guessing. Just as with violence, we care about its impact on the characters that we
have come to care about.
If the characters rush into bed, then we become disassociated from the awkward sex scene and
its significance to the characters because we're not invested in their story. It's all about
getting them there: the courtship and romance leading up to the seduction scene to the
aftermath and consequences. Ironically, of all the elements, the actual sex scene itself is
the least significant in the grand scheme of storytelling.
In the theater, nudity is incredibly powerful. It grips the audience's attention as they
focus on the vulnerable, bared actor so intimately close - and naked! Perhaps because we
take television for granted due to its familiarity and omnipresence, sex on the small screen
seems much less threatening. Thus, the rationale for steamy television shows that are far
more explicit than most R-rated full features. Not surprisingly, 40% of a film's profit
comes from video rentals. This very well may be because we are far more receptive to these
scenes in the privacy of our own homes.
While television has become saturated with sex, full features seem to have become much more
comfortable with violence. Perhaps this is due to the fear of AIDS. Tom Cruise and Nicole
Kidman will test the Puritan waters in Hollywood and be a significant gauge of the potential
for eroticism in 70 mm in the 21st century with the success or failure of their erotic "Eyes
Wide Shut" due out soon.
The advice offered for writing sex scenes was incredibly valuable. The first, most elemental
concern is that if you, as the writer, are uncomfortable writing the scene, you can almost
guarantee that the audience will be squirming in their seats. This isn't necessarily a bad
thing - if you use it.
You must release their tension. If you don't give them a green light for laughter,
effectively opening the floodgates to direct that anticipated embarrassed energy so that
they laugh with you, then they will surely laugh at you because they must release their
discomfort somehow. You might as well use it to your advantage - and interweave it into your
story.
There are different types of discomfort, tension, and energy. You shouldn't take a scene out
just because the response cards from a recruited preview tell you that Jodi Foster's rape
scene in "The Accused" or the suicide scene in "Dead Poet's Society" were too painful to
watch. Where would these stories be without the scene upon which everything else hinged? To
delete such a scene in order to appease a random audience who hasn't had a moment to sift
through their first impressions jeopardizes the underlying power of a film, its momentum,
its meaning, virtually its cohesiveness.
Previews are yet another mulching tool to push the film towards the lowest common
denominator. It's democracy gone mad.
Callie Khouri made an interesting comment. She said: "Do you hear that laughter? Do you see
those tears? I anticipated every single one of them." This comment was actually made out of
the frustration that writers are somehow inexplicably dismissed by marketing gurus in
strategy when it comes to being able to accurately assess and identify with the audience
they have just moved and so understood.
It's okay to stir things up and make your audience uncomfortable, the panelists urged, but
cautioned, you don't want them so uncomfortable that they snap out of their willing
suspension of disbelief and disassociate from the story.
Just as you are explicit in the stage directions as to what a scene conveys, so too, by
default, is it implicit what you don't want filmed. Trying to convey love through sex is
virtually impossible. Do your characters talk while they're making love?
Have you managed to intercept some apex between the male and the female fantasy? Hollywood
movies favor fantasy to reality; award-winning movies favor reality to fantasy. Pretty Woman
is a good illustration. This very gritty, dark script got upended into a very marketable and
successful Cinderella story.
Another example was offered of a female character that had marginal sex with her husband,
pretty good sex in an extra-marital affair with his best friend and incredible sex with a
stranger. The further away you get from love - and the more of a fantasy it becomes - the
better the "sex" in and of itself is freed to be. Male extramarital affairs have societally
and filmically been more socially accepted than female extra-marital affairs. "A Walk on the
Moon" and "Bridges of Madison County" have broached these waters. Sex is the center of our
lives. It's hard to leave it out.
Heather Hale is a screenwriter. "Quadroon Ball", set to star Vanessa L. Williams and air on
Lifetime television will be her first produced credit. She is the founder and coordinator of
the Screenwriters On-Line Cooperative http://members.aol.com/SOCwebsite and is working on
two speculative screenplays: "Bait & Switch" and "SuperHero."
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