“Concepts, not actors, are now the real stars at the movies”
Perhaps you tire of all the harping I do about the importance of coming up with a strong story concept as the basis for an original screenplay, as I do here, here, here, and here.
If you do get tired of my harping, you’d best read this:
LOS ANGELES — R.I.P., movie stars.
You remember them. People like Julia Roberts, Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Nicolas Cage — actors who could open a movie by slapping their gleaming mugs on a poster.
No more. Once the safeguard of Hollywood’s most profitable movies, A-list celebrities are finding their stock fading at the multiplex, where concept is trumping co-stars and story may actually matter.
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What gives? Television and tabloids have made stars an everyday sight, and it could be that cash-strapped moviegoers need something more than a familiar face to fork over $15.
The brain-teasing thriller Inception, for instance, has succeeded despite essentially removing Leonardo DiCaprio from the poster.
“Leo’s name is in very small font, and it’s clear they’re selling the concept and filmmaker (Christopher Nolan),” says Jeff Bock, analyst for the industry tracking firm Exhibitor Relations. “They sold that on concept.”
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Access Hollywood critic Scott Mantz says that while the trend worries Hollywood’s richest talent, it’s good for the movies.
“Look at Star Trek, look at The Hangover,” he says of two relatively starless hits last year. “People don’t need to recognize the face. They need to connect to the story.”
Look at those two phrases:
They sold that on the concept.
They [people] need to connect to the story.
Those comments from industry veterans echo two of the three markers I have for a strong story concept: It has to have a grab. And it has to have an audience.
The grab is the hook, a distinctive element that gets someone’s attention. With K-9, it was the idea of a human cop being forced to partner with a dog cop. Why a grab is increasingly important nowadays is that studios are spending more money than ever to market their movies. It’s an extremely competitive consumer marketplace and the studios are fighting not only against other movies, but TV, video games, the Web, texting, and so on. A movie with a strong story concept, one that grabs peoples’ attention, is easier to market and, therefore, greatly desired by the studios.
The audience is exactly what it sounds like, a provisional answer to the question, “Who is going to want to see this movie?” One critical component is to ask who is going to connect with the movie? Again much of this goes right back to the story concept. Consider two movies: The Hangover (“A Las Vegas-set comedy centered around three groomsmen who lose their about-to-be-wed buddy during their drunken misadventures, then must retrace their steps in order to find him.”) and the currently in release indie hit The Kids Are All Right (“Two children conceived by artificial insemination bring their birth father into their family life.”) Both are comedies and yet each has a different audience in large part due to the underlying story concept of each movie, the Hangover crowd connecting to that story for different reasons than the Kids crowd, and vice versa.
And so…
Harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp harp!!!
You should be working on generating story concepts every day. Because the best way to find a great story concept is to come up with a lot of story concepts.