Movie Trends, Part 1: “Movies take a page from reality TV”

At the end of the year, we see all sorts of articles in which movie observers attempt to read the cinematic tea leaves and discern trends. I’ve pulled three of these articles together on the last day of the year (indeed, the decade) to see if they — or we — can make any sense out of this crazy thing called the movie business. Parts 2 and 3 to come over the course of today.

From from the LA Times “24 Frames” blog: Movies take a page from reality TV:

At least 13 movies this fall season are based on real-life stories, including a survival drama (“127 Hours”), a Silicon Valley history ( “The Social Network”), a legal tale (“Conviction”), a boxing saga (“The Fighter”), a heart-stopping action flick (Unstoppable”) and a heart-tugging romantic dramedy (“Love & Other Drugs”).
In a story in Monday’s Times, we take a look at the fact-based trend: what’s behind it, where it’s leading and what risks it poses. As “127 Hours” director Danny Boyle says: “As a director, you like having a real story because that’s what makes it more powerful. But it’s also hard because you know you’re dealing with someone’s life.” Or as “Conviction” star Hilary Swank says of the subgenre: “You can’t take a lot of liberty with the storytelling.”

After a decade of reality television, the movie business is finally catching up. Studios are flogging the truth (or at least truthy) horse. And judging by how well some of the movies have performed so far, it’s not a moment too soon. We’re all suckers, it seems, for stories that come with a based-on-a-true-story tag.

But are we consumed by reality-inspired stories at our peril? 

“I think everybody is exhausted by neat, shapely fictional stories we’ve had for so long, and a compelling situation from real life is much more interesting,” film historian David Thomson tells The Times. “But there’s a great danger. Every time a story is made out of a real person’s experience, we enter into a process of distortion.”

Some observations:

* Reality TV, non-scripted TV, doc-style TV, whatever moniker you choose, it’s difficult to imagine that this entire generation of young people who have grown up with this type of television programming hasn’t been influenced by it. But how? A few years back there was a burst in documentary movies selling to studios and their specialty divisions. As this BoxOfficeMojo chart indicates, only 3 of the top 30 grossing documentary feature films were released before 1990 and a majority of them were produced in the last decade. I thought non-scripted TV might have been a contributing influence to that trend, younger viewers weaned on doc-style television drawn to similar type movies. But I’ve never seen any hard evidence to support that appraisal. And there aren’t nearly as many feature-length docs in movie theaters as there were even five years ago. So who knows.

* Re the whole “based on a true story” tag: I find that hugely ironic because for years, MOW’s (Movies-of-the-Week) on broadcast networks and cable nets like Lifetime were packed with movies “based on a true story” or “inspired by a true story.” And not to be demeaning, but I think it’s safe to say that most folks in the industry rather look down on that type of movie-making. “Disease of the Week” was something you heard tossed around back then. So here we are a couple of decades later — and this is what major movie studios aspire to?

* Then there’s this odd tension about “real stories.” Check out Boyle’s comment: “As a director, you like having a real story because that’s what makes it more powerful.” Huh? ‘Real’ stories are somehow intrinsically more ‘powerful’ than fiction? But then real stories come with a built-in downside. Per Hilary Swank: “You can’t take a lot of liberty with the storytelling.” But why would you want to take liberties with a ‘real’ story since it’s intrinsically more ‘powerful’? Ah, perhaps because ‘real’ stories sometimes, even oftentimes don’t lay out like… you know… a story? They have to be shaped into a coherent narrative (more on this below).

* And what about this backhanded swipe at fiction from highly respected film critic David Thomson: “I think everybody is exhausted by neat, shapely fictional stories we’ve had for so long, and a compelling situation from real life is much more interesting.” Neat, shapely fictional stories? I presume he’s talking about formulaic fare, but at the end of the day as far as Hollywood is concerned — and even most consumers — movies are a commodity and we approach genre pictures with certain expectations about things that are supposed to happen. Does that by definition make them formulaic? Then Thomson compounds matters with this: “But there’s a great danger. Every time a story is made out of a real person’s experience, we enter into a process of distortion.” I’m afraid to say that any movie adaptation of anybody ‘real’ is a distortion. If there is a Golden Rule of Screenplay Adaptations it’s, “Never let the facts stand in the way of the story.”

And this is where I think a major problem exists: confusing reality with story. When Aaron Sorkin wrote The Social Network, he chose to overlook a rather critical fact about his story’s Protagonist: Mark Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend [Priscilla Chan] since his sophomore year at Harvard. If you believe Wikipedia, she moved into his Palo Alto house in September 2010. In fact, here’s a photo of the presumably happy couple:

That is reality: Zuckerberg has a girlfriend. Sorkin made what I think is a brilliant choice in his script: excise Priscilla from the picture. Why? Because Zuckerberg having a girlfriend would have undercut one of the basic themes of The Social Network: the irony of a guy who becomes a billionaire creating Facebook, which is all about connections, and yet he himself is unable to connect with anyone in any genuine, deep, human sense. In fact the movie ends driving home this point: Zuckerberg alone in a law office, using Facebook to ‘friend’ his first (and presumably closest girlfriend) Erica, then hitting reload… reload… reload… awaiting her response.

Now that’s great storytelling. Of course because the ‘real’ Mark Zuckerberg has had the same girlfriend for nearly a decade, the scene is a lie. But I would argue the story Sorkin scripted is more interesting than Zuckerberg’s reality — at least insofar as a movie is concerned. 

So to sum up: Moviegoers are exhausted by neat, shapely fictional stories and prefer compelling real stories, but there’s always a danger of making a movie about real people because you don’t want to distort their story except for the fact that in order to make an actual story that works in a movie you have to distort reality.

Glad we cleared that up!

What are your thoughts? Is there a trend toward more reality TV movies?

TAKEAWAY: Don’t be confused by all the rhetoric. The simple fact is real life is an excellent resource for coming up with story ideas. In fact, I just created this under Lists:

A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2010)

Back in April, I posted 30 story ideas ripped from the proverbial headlines and literally gave them away. For free. Any of you can use them to write anything you want. Have a ball. I’m reprising that effort next April and already have 25 stories lined up. So the takeaway for screenwriters: Always have one part of your mind on a constant look-out for story concepts. Any time you read a newspaper, magazine, web article, ask yourself: Is this a movie?

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