Books versus TV/Movies

Some time ago now, during a riot in London, it was reported that in one area every shop had been picked clean by rioters except—the bookstore. That one had been left untouched. I can’t imagine the same to be true of the video store. 

It’s a familiar refrain and sometimes even I get tired of hearing it.  But it does often seem that our society’s values are a little skewed.  Sports often appear to be valued over education, infotainment over actual news, and—yes—movies and TV over books and literacy.  I generally find that when I’m reaching for an example to illustrate some important point about writing, that a reference to a “movie” often works best. The books I want to use as illustrations will work only for a subset of people.  The movie will work for nearly everyone. In fact, I sometimes feel as if I watch most TV and movies just so I’ll have something to talk about with other people and to use as examples in my classes.

Along a similar vein, I’ve had dozens of folks over the years find out that I’m a writer and immediately recommend that I 1) write for the movies, 2) read screenplays as a way to improve my writing,  3) read a book about screen writing, or 4) all of the above.  This is in spite of the fact that I, 1) don’t really find movies very interesting, 2) personally find screenplays the most boring thing to read outside of technical manuals, 3) don’t ever want my written prose to sound like it came from a movie, and 4) it just plain irritates me.

Now, I have nothing against folks who like movies. I like plenty of them myself. I also think that writers can learn something from studying every form of writing, including screenwriting, and there are movies that contain great dialogue, although I generally find them strongest at the “one liner” verbalizations.  But what irritates me about people making the “movie” suggestions to me is that these folks seem clearly to value movies more than books.  It almost seems they are saying, “well yes, write your little novels until you develop the professional skills to write for the important markets, TV and the movies.”  Frankly, most TV and movie writing isn’t very good, and that which is good generally comes originally from books, as with the Harry Potter movies and Game of Thrones.

I’ll admit that I probably sometimes overstate the case against movies, but that’s because hardly anyone else seems to question the “movies are just worth more than books” vibe that we live with in our society. I question it.  If my TV/video system was gone when I woke up tomorrow, my life would go on almost exactly as it did before.  When Lana is not home, our TV is off 99% of the time. But if I woke up and all my books were gone, I’d be devastated and would probably head for the nearest bookstore immediately to start replenishing my shelves. 

For me, and for always, books are where it's at.

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TV SHOWS

Since I've been an adult, I can pretty much name the TV shows that I've watched through their first run on the fingers of one hand. Frasier, Modern Family, and The Walking Dead are the top three. I came to Nip/Tuck in the second season but was hooked then. But even Star Trek: The Next Generation I caught mostly in reruns, though that had more to do with the fact that I was very busy with my first teaching job than from anything else.

I came to The Office and Big Bang Theory several seasons in, but did make the new episodes part of my regular viewing once I'd been hooked on them. Three other series that I started on the first episode with were Flash Forward, Falling Skies, and Terra Nova. I was very disappointed when Flash Forward was cancelled, but I quit Falling Skies pretty quickly and was ready to give up on Terra Nova when it was cancelled.

I'm now watching a new series and have to admit I'm still hooked. This is The Following, with Kevin Bacon as an ex-FBI agent who gets involved with the wife of a serial killer and then becomes the target for an elaborate revenge plot by said killer. I think it's Kevin Bacon's acting that is keeping me hooked. He's very fine in the role. At least it seems to me.

It's also the acting of the ensemble casts of Modern Family, Frasier, Big Bang Theory, and The Office that kept/keeps me coming back to those shows. Nip/Tuck was about the totally insane plot twists that they got up to in that show. And The Walking Dead is a combination of acting and plot for me.

How about you?  What shows are you truly hooked on?  And is it the acting, the stories, or something else that keeps you watching?
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TV: Where's The Beef?

I’ve never written about TV. Maybe it's time. My family was one of the first in our neck of the Arkansas woods to get color TV. We watched it a couple of hours each night. In those days, parents decided on the channel, though we only had three to choose from. We watched the news, which I didn’t get at that age, and Lawrence Welk, which I hated, and Grand Old Opry, which I didn’t like, and sometimes the Porter Wagner show, which I hated. A little later Hee Haw came out, and that I liked. It had pretty girls and I was beginning to notice girls. And sometimes we’d watch Bonanza or Gunsmoke, both of which I liked a lot. I remember when Star Trek came out. In the first season it was on at 7:00 and some serious begging earned me the chance to watch it. The next year it was on at 9:00 and that was past my bedtime. No more Trek for me, and I didn’t see the 2nd and 3rd seasons until years later in reruns. I never watched The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits because those were deemed too scary for me.

By college, I had pretty much lost interest in TV. I’d watch Star Trek, and for a while got semi-hooked on Buck Rodgers. The only other shows I watched occasionally were the westerns, Big Valley and High Chaparral, and sometimes the detective series Mannix. I would catch episodes of things like Hart to Hart but didn’t watch them regularly. Unlike most of my friends, I never watched MASH, or WKRP in Cincinnati (although later I caught episodes of each in syndication.) I watched episodes here and there of some SF shows I really liked, such as The Invaders and Land of the Giants.

When Star Trek: The Next Generation came out, I made it a habit to watch it each week. That lasted most of a season. I just found it impossible to schedule time to devote to a weekly TV show. Plus, I often simply forgot a show was going to be on. Time and again I started watching a series and failed three to four episodes in. It happened with Space Above and Beyond, with Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek Voyager, Star Trek Enterprise, Stargate SG1, and, more recently, the new Battlestar Galactica. Just this last month I decided I was going to watch Fringe. I managed two episodes and got bored.

The only TV shows I’ve seen every episode of are the original Star Trek, Star Trek: TNG, Frazier, and Nip/Tuck. In all cases I saw far more episodes during syndication (or rebroadcast) than when it first aired.

I guess, in part, I just don’t get what is so interesting about TV. I can read for hours, write for hours, play a video game for hours. But ten or fifteen minutes into most TV shows and I’m clicking channels. And this has gotten much worse as TV shows have introduced ambitious multi-year arcs. I don’t even try to watch shows like Lost, for example, because I know I’m never going to keep up.

Do I have a point? Not really. I like the characters on some shows and there are often interesting story lines and special effects. But most of the time they seem like more trouble than they're worth, or they interfere with a dozen other things I’d rather do. So what is it about particular TV shows that hooks you as a viewer? I’d like to know.

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Poverty of Content

Schizophrenics sometimes talk a lot but say little of meaning or substance, and this is typically referred to as poverty of content. Well, our culture, especially the media it seems, is in the middle of a serious poverty of content phase, and along with that goes a poverty of imagination. Two of the last three movies I’ve seen were 1408 and The Number 23. These are recent movies and it turns out they were both based on Stephen King stories, as is the soon to be released The Mist. I also saw some other film with Kate Beckinsale in it, Vacancy. Now, Stephen King is a fine writer, but there are other writers doing the horror/thriller thing. There is plenty of original work available but the film companies just keep coming back to King over and over, despite a certain sameness to many of these films. And Vacancy while OK as a movie, was a virtual remake of many previous films. A couple of years ago they filmed Jack Finney’s Body Snatchers for like the fourth time. And now I hear there is going to be yet another Incredible Hulk movie. They just made one a couple of years back. It sucked. Why do we need another?

Why isn’t some filmmaker bringing Wayne Allen Sallee to the screen, or Del Stone Jr., or Dennis Etchison, or Ramsey Campbell, or the late Karl Edward Wagner? What about the works of virtual unknowns like T. Chris Martindale, or Del James? Sidney Williams has books like When Darkness Falls or Blood Hunter, which could make terrifying films. And why aren’t emerging talents being nurtured, like Stewart Sternberg or Bernita Harris, or many others here in the local blogosphere? No, the companies go back to the same old wells over and over and over.

I’m afraid we writers have to face the fact that the real money in entertainment these days is in the pockets of TV and Filmmakers. And that is a largely closed club with admission allowed only to a few prose writers like King, Thomas Harris, Clive Barker, and now Neil Gaiman. I feel very fortunate myself that I have a good job and don’t have to depend on writing income for my survival. And no one said the world is fair or that the breaks should go to the deserving. In fact, I honestly feel most sorry for the “consumers,” for folks like myself who would enjoy a good movie if one were to be made.

They say there is a dearth of truly good passing quarterbacks in the NFL these days. That’s because colleges are no longer nurturing them but are focused largely on fielding a quarterback who is a glorified extra running back. In the same way, the dearth of good new ideas in Hollywood is a direct result of thirty or more years of neglecting the development and nurturing of promising prose writers, and the blindness to any talented writer other than the few anointed ones.

Don’t look for it to get better anytime soon.