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Russian military leaders have expressed concern about US plans for a national missile defense system. Will defense technology be limited by possibilities for a strategic imbalance? Is this just SDI all over again?

lunarchick - 10:14am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8042 of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com

``My research has revealed that even the most complex forms of multiple story are actually heavily dependent on the nuts and bolts of the traditional threeact story.''

Scriptwriting Updated is a very nutsandbolts type of book, full of charts, diagrams, stepbystep breakdowns and checklists of useful questions. It reflects Aronson's practical background in the film and TV industries... She is also a playwright and novelist ..

Aronson's scriptwriting advice balances free creativity - she often returns to Edward de Bono's ideas about ``lateral thinking'' - against what she sees as the importance of structure, planning and plain hard work.

``Writing is a very intuitive, emotional business,'' she comments, ``and you need to impose objectivity. You really need a way to escape the emotional connection you have with the dialogue and characters.''

Aronson's early training in music convinced her that ideas and emotion cannot be reliably and regularly transmitted without technique.

``I have no problem with the notion of teaching people to write - an issue that many people seem to have a problem with. Of course, writers must have talent. But to say that the teaching of writing is impossible or destructive is like telling a talented musician that the best thing they can do is shut themselves in a room and teach themselves.''

IN ARONSON'S view, the new narrative structures now proliferating need more structure, not less. She rates Mike Figgis' Time Code, for example, as a fascinating but ultimately failed experiment.

``The interesting thing about parallel narrative is that, when it works, it works because it pegs its multiple stories to the high dramatic moments in the threeact structure. It's the use of those dramatic high points that help the multiple narrative films cope with their inherent problems with pace, meaning and closure.''

As someone with an intensely practical investment in screenwriting, Aronson is understandably fixed on what makes a movie work or ``hold''. But sometimes the search for rules (so typical of screenplay manuals) can overwhelm the significance of the exceptions. Altman's Short Cuts, for instance, is faulted for slowness, repetitiveness, ``shaggy dog'' false leads, absence of cohesion and connection, and a lack of eventful actions that would move its multiple stories forward in a satisfying way.

For Aronson, the crucial concern is audience expectations. A recurring refrain of her book is the question, ``What film are we in?'' Like many writers, she seeks focus, clarity and economy in screen storytelling. But isn't Altman's agenda, honed across three decades in mainstream and arthouse film, rather different? We may need to understand further what is truly new about these new narrative forms.

Aronson cheerfully admits the subjectivity of her judgments and awaits the commercially successful ``difficult'' movie that will ``prove me completely wrong about everything''.

In the meantime, she continues to roadtest her screenwriting theories to everexpanding audiences: ``I believe that writing and making films is hard because art is hard.

rshowalter - 10:15am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8043 of 8047)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

' We may need to understand further what is truly new about these new narrative forms."

Yes! And get rid of some "bad stories" that keep repeating themselves, monotonously, and with tragic consequences.

We need more serious comedies like Mary Poppins , and many fewer black, black "comedies of death" like Doctor Strangelove .

Great stuff ! Cooking breakfast, then I'll be back.

Dawn, you're a great artist!

lunarchick - 10:22am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8044 of 8047)
lunarchick@www.com

"The alpha wave is the sanity check," Liley told the magazine.

rshowalter - 10:45am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8045 of 8047)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

In the usages, "chaos" and "resonance" are related concepts.

rshowalter - 11:14am Aug 23, 2001 EST (#8046 of 8047)
Robert Showalter showalte@macc.wisc.edu

" IN ARONSON'S view, the new narrative structures now proliferating need more structure, not less. She rates Mike Figgis' Time Code, for example, as a fascinating but ultimately failed experiment.

" ``The interesting thing about parallel narrative is that, when it works, it works because it pegs its multiple stories to the high dramatic moments in the threeact structure. It's the use of those dramatic high points that help the multiple narrative films cope with their inherent problems with pace, meaning and closure.''"

She's talking about structures that FIT INTO PEOPLE'S HEADS. Not the "amorphous content of nature" -- but what we make of it -- and can make of it - and can find beautiful in it.

There are some times when aesthetic judgements about the same facts are made very differently between groups -- when what is ugly and to be dismissed by one group is beautiful, and tends to be believed, by another.

When that happens, one can say "everyone to their own taste." And that's a reasonable human response, very often.

But what of fatal mistakes, and what of fraud ?

Sometimes, you have to CHECK. It can be surprisingly hard to do.

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